Herbert E. Nieburgs, MD, a cell pathology researcher and founder of the International Society for Preventive Oncology, died in June at age 99. He also founded the ISPO journal, (originally named ), for which he served as editor until age 95.
Nieburgs began studying pathology at Medical College of Georgia in 1946. He went on to found and direct a cell pathology lab at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York in 1954, and then in the 1980s, moved to the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he served as a senior affiliate.
His research has demonstrated that cells display malignancy-associated changes prior to the appearance of the clinical symptoms of cancer. He is noted for inventing a high-magnification microscope, designing a cell-staining process, and developing a system to compute pathology diagnoses.
In 2000, Nieburgs was honored as a 50-year member of the American Association for Cancer Research; and he spoke at an AACR meeting in 2011, and served as a member of the Molecular Epidemiology Working Group from 2002 to 2003.