Leo Sachs

Sachs was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1924.[1] Following Hitler’s accession to power in 1933, he immigrated to England with his parents.[1] He received his doctorate from Cambridge in 1951 and moved to Israel in 1952 to work as a research scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.[1]

At the Weizmann Institute, Sachs initiated biomedical research and established the Department of Genetics and Virology.[1] He became an associate professor in 1960 and a full professor in 1962, and headed the institute’s Genetics Department for 27 years.[1][2] His work pioneered basic and medically applied approaches in stem-cell biology, development, hematology, and oncology.[1]

Sachs was among the earliest researchers, alongside Irving Weissman, to succeed in identifying and propagating stem cells capable of maturing into specialized cells.[4] This technically demanding research concerned processes of cell division and maturation that depend on growth factors produced by many cell types in a complex, interdependent manner.[4] In 1963, Sachs became the first researcher to grow normal human blood cells in a laboratory dish.[3]

His work also contributed to prenatal diagnosis through the development of amniocentesis with Professor Matilda Danon and Dr. David Serr.[5] Their initial aim was to identify fetal sex early in pregnancy, before ultrasound was available, and their first test took place in 1955.[5] In 1956, Sachs examined cells drawn from amniotic fluid to diagnose possible genetic abnormalities or prenatal infections in developing fetuses.[3] By 1957, the procedure had also been used to identify whether a fetus had cystic fibrosis.[5]

Sachs’s laboratory work on normal human blood cells led to the development of therapy that increases the production of crucial white blood cells in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.[3] Amniocentesis, to whose development he contributed, became a routinely performed procedure worldwide and is used to detect a range of genetic and infectious diseases.[3][5]

Sachs received the Israel Prize for natural sciences in 1972, the Rothschild Prize in biological sciences in 1977, the Wolf Prize in Medicine in 1980, and the EMET Prize for life sciences, medicine, and genetics in 2002.[1] He was the first Israeli to receive the Wolf Prize in Medicine.[2] He shared the 1980 award with Cesar Milstein and James L. Gowans; the joint citation recognized contributions to understanding cell function and dysfunction, including lymphocytes’ immunological role, specific-antibody development, and “the elucidation of mechanisms governing the control and differentiation of normal and cancer cells.”[6]

His academic distinctions included membership in the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and foreign associate membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences.[1] He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in London in 1997.[1]