Journal of Virology, July 2009, p. 6975-6976, Vol. 83, No. 14
0022-538X/09/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.00985-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
| EDITORIAL |
John N. Brady (1952-2009): a Generous Spirit
Editor in Chief, Journal of Virology
John N. Brady, Chief of the Virus Tumor Biology Section of the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology, National Institutes of Health, died of cancer on 27 April 2009. John was a stellar member of the virology community. He was a longtime Journal of Virology reviewer and a member of the editorial board. He will be missed. Fatah Kashanchi of the George Washington University Medical Center has written John's memorial. Fatah worked with John at the NIH and published more than 30 papers with him. Fatah thanks all the people who contributed to John's obituary, including Kuan-Teh Jeang, Lou Laimins, Mary Loeken, Renaud Mehieux, Paul Lambert, Graziella Piras, Scott Gitlin, Paul Lindholm, Nadia Rosenthal, Sergi Nekhai, Brian Wigdahl, David Price, Susan J. Marriott, Cynthia Masison, Jurgen Dittmer, Eric Verdin, Bassel E. Sawaya, and John's longtime assistants Janet Duvall Grimm and Michael Radonovich, who gave immense support to all the individuals who went through John's lab.
John N. Brady, dedicated researcher, scientific pioneer, and visionary teacher, died 27 April 2009, after a short but courageous battle with colon cancer. John passed away almost 22 years to the day after George Khoury, his former mentor at the NIH, died. Qualities that come to mind when one remembers John are integrity, humility, dedication, consideration, fairness, loyalty, and always, a sense of humor.
John received his bachelor's degree in microbiology in 1973 from Southern Illinois University. He then went on to obtain his master's degree at the same university, working on vaccines against three different viruses. In 1978, John was awarded his Ph.D. from Kansas State University, where he worked on structural proteins of polyomavirus under the direction of Richard Consigili. He left a lasting impression on the students in the lab and on his former mentor with regard to the quality of the work completed for his thesis.
John began working at the NIH in 1978 with Norman Salzman. Several years later, he moved to the NCI to work alongside George Khoury. With the passing of George, John assumed the role of acting director of the laboratory and in 1993 became chief of the Virus Tumor Biology Section. John received an NCI Intramural Award for Innovative Research in 1998 and was named NIH Senior Biological Research Scientist in 2002 by the director of the NIH. This highly competitive appointment is reserved for researchers with outstanding achievements and is only one of 45 honors John received for excellence in research. In 2004, he became principal investigator of the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology.
John held adjunct appointments at George Washington and Georgetown Universities and contributed to a number of book chapters with Norman Salzman, Peter Howley, Yosef Aloni, P. Hollsberg, D. Hafler, K. Khalili, Irvin Chen, and Rafi Ahmed. He served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Virology and AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, as well as a number of other journals. John chaired many meetings, including the Cold Spring Harbor RNA Tumor Virus Meeting and the HTLV-1 Retrovirus International Conference and organized the meeting on posttranslation modification of p53 held at the NCI. He published more than 202 papers in peer-reviewed, high-impact journals, including, but not limited to, Journal of Virology, Nature, Journal of Experimental Medicine, PNAS, and Molecular Cell.
John was a central member of a talented group of young scientists in the Khoury lab. He had a thoughtful and careful approach to doing highly competitive work on viruses and gene expression. This was at a time when the fundamental mechanisms by which enhancers and other transcriptional regulatory elements function were just beginning to be understood. John did important work in this area, starting with SV40 and E2F and then moving into HTLV-1 research. Early in his NIH career, John showed that the SV40 large T antigen transactivated the SV40 major late promoter independently of its effect on DNA replication and that the ability to transactivate the SV40 major late promoter correlated with its ability to bind to SV40 DNA. A manuscript reporting these findings was published in PNAS. This observation, along with John's prior characterization of the SV40 major late promoter in vitro and in vivo, made it possible to study how genes were transactivated using molecular approaches.
More than 50 students, postdocs, and research fellows went through John's lab and most have fond memories. John was encouraging and supportive, ensuring that these mentees had successful careers as independent scientists. In fact, up until a few days prior to his passing, he would e-mail and ask "Is there anything I can do for you?"
John had a broad perspective and inspired others to think openly. He was always welcoming to those in his laboratory and created an environment where everyone was allowed to have an active role in contributing to the lab's work. John had high standards for the integrity and quality of the research that came out of his lab. His commitment to the expansion of the world's scientific knowledge was exemplified by his attention to ensuring that the appropriate controls were included in all experiments, that results were reproducible, and that adequate attention was paid to the relevance of the experimental conditions used. As a result, his manuscripts typically were accepted by peer-reviewed journals with only minor revisions. In fact, many of his students and postdocs would later tell their own students to "look at the Brady papers" to see how a good experiment should be designed. These values were taught to all of his postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and technical staff, many of whom are pursuing successful academic careers across the United States and worldwide.
John was frequently recruited to leave the NCI/NIH and take on leadership roles at academic institutions around the country. When the recruiting process became serious, he insisted on there being positions for his laboratory staff to move with him (including M.D. and Ph.D. postdoctoral fellows, students, and staff). Ultimately, he always decided to stay at the NIH to pursue his love of science and not be "distracted" by politics and administrative responsibilities that exceeded those at the NCI/NIH.
John trained many postdoctoral fellows from around the world. They would typically train in the lab for 3 to 5 years. He always showed a complete sense of enthusiasm at the first conversation with folks who were not quite used to the American way of life. He supported them both academically and with making adjustments to American living. Many of these scientists saw John as the epitome of a traditional American: optimistic, straightforward, and with a deeply held sense of what he considered right. This extended to his straightforward approach to science.
He encouraged his students and postdocs to write reviews, review manuscripts, and present their work at national and international meetings. He frequently asked his senior postdocs to present at HTLV-1 international meetings and many of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's virus meetings.
John would have his lab meetings Friday afternoons, when people could present their data and engage in spirited debates over experimental design and interpretation of data. These discussions nearly always led to fresh insights and "out of the box" thinking.
It was not unusual for scientists attending study sections in Washington to stop by John's lab and share exciting data. These meetings would typically result in a scientific collaboration and publication with generous authorship and credit at the end.
Outside the lab, John had a longtime love for baseball that started in early childhood. He played at the collegiate level at Southern Illinois University under legendary coach Richard "Itch" Jones and also started the Gaithersburg Giants, a 22-and-under Maryland Collegiate Baseball League for county college players coming back to the area. Until the time of his death, John was a longtime coach and administrator for both the Gaithersburg Sports Association and Montgomery County Baseball Association. John passed on his love of baseball to his two sons, Kevin, two-time Gaithersburg Gazette Player of the Year, currently pitching for Clemson University, and Matt, assistant coach at Gaithersburg High School.
In closing, John was well known for his persistence and determination, his infectious enthusiasm for every discovery, great or small, and his skill in encouraging his protégés. His many friends and colleagues greatly appreciated his good cheer, boundless energy, social grace, and generosity. John's death will be a loss felt for many years to come. I believe if he was able to impart one last bit of wisdom, it would be to remind us to be diligent in looking after our health and well-being. He will be greatly missed.
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John N. Brady 1952-2009
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Journal of Virology, July 2009, p. 6975-6976, Vol. 83, No. 14
0022-538X/09/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/JVI.00985-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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