Tribute to the late Dr Greg Mundy

GREGORY ROBERT MUNDY MD June 16, 1942 - February 25, 2010

It is with much sadness that we record that Greg Mundy passed away peacefully at home with his family in San Antonio on February 25. The ANZBMS was one of the many Societies and other organizations that Greg contributed to outstandingly in a career of consistent, remarkable achievement over four decades in bone cell biology and its control by hormones and cytokines, the implications of this for osteoporosis, and most notably, for the skeletal complications of cancer. On the several occasions on which he took part in ANZBMS meetings he provided great inspiration as a role model for our young scientsists.

Greg was Australian, and remained unmistakably so throughout his 35 years in the USA. Born in Templestowe, he graduated in Medicine at Melbourne University, winning Full Blues in cricket and baseball as a student. He was a very effective and lively-paced opening bowler for the University, topping the bowling averages in his last 2 years, 1964-65 and 1965-66, and playing successfully in 1966 for the Victorian Colts XI.

After 2 years at the Royal Hobart Hospital as a Resident, he began working with Professor Albert Baikie, who had taken the position of Professor of Medicine at the University of Tasmania. Baikie was a distinguished haematologist, under whose tutelage Greg began research on multiple myeloma, completing a research thesis on that subject for his Doctorate of Medicine. This provided a great background for his subsequent contributions to understanding of how that disease so profoundly affects the skeleton.

Career advice was not so readily available in those days, so Greg made his own plans, deciding that the new discipline of Clinical Pharmacology – the scientific basis of drug treatments – could be an interesting further training route. He arranged a position to do that at the University of Rochester, New York USA, and he and Helen left for there in 1970. When it became apparent that his allocated post looked like not being productive, Greg aligned himself with another Rochester laboratory, led by Larry Raisz MD, who had worked out how to grow bone in tissue culture in ways that allowed them to study how bone resorption is controlled by hormones, drugs or chemicals. That led Greg into the field of bone biology where he was to make such wonderful contributions, and was the beginning of a long and remarkably productive association with Raisz.

His first notable scientific achievement was to show with Raisz that both malignant white blood cells and multiple myeloma cells produced activities that caused the breakdown of bone , by activating the cells responsible for this - osteoclasts. The Mundy/Raisz ‘osteoclast activating factor” – OAF – became the byword for how blood cancers could affect the skeleton. It produced two New England Journal papers in Greg’s first year as a Fellow, and it set the scene for new thinking about myeloma particularly. In subsequent years Mundy was either directly or indirectly responsible for many of the advances made in understanding the bone complications of myeloma, and how to treat them. He made himself very available over the years to the international myeloma patient support group, where his warmth of personality and communication skills were much appreciated.

Greg rapidly became a great leader in research on the cells of bone and how they communicate with each other, and the implications of these communication mechanisms for diseases – osteoporosis and cancer. Especially over more than two decades he led many of the discoveries around how solid cancers, particularly of breast and prostate, spread to the skeleton and grew there. He was a superb lecturer, whether talking about his own research or surveying the field, and had a real skill in cutting through complexity.

When Larry Raisz moved to Connecticut in 1978 Greg accompanied him, but in 1980 moved to San Antonio as Head of Endocrinology, where he spent 25 years as a remarkably productive scientist in bone biology, and an educator who trained more than 150 students and Fellows, many of whom have progressed to successful independent careers. His research has been acknowledged by very many prestigious awards, and his leadership exemplary as President of IBMS, co-founder and President of CABS, President of ASBMR and a tireless worker for all those causes as well as those of the National Osteoporosis Foundation, the International Myeloma Foundation and the many Editorial Boards on which he served.

In 2006, after 26 years of success in San Antonio, Greg took Directorship of the Vanderbilt Center in Bone Biology, as John A. Oates Chair in Translational Medicine and Professor of Medicine, Pharmacology, Orthopedics and Cancer Biology. That Center’s rapid success and activity after such a very short time are a standing tribute to him. His illness began in September, 2008, but throughout 2009 he was full of ideas and vitality, despite increasing physical impairment, even giving featured talks in early December at the American Society of Hematology meeting in New Orleans, and then at the San Antonio Breast Cancer meeting. Consistent with the great character and determination he showed in all other aspects of his life, Greg lived through this illness with great grace and dignity, helped by his loving family.

We offer our sincerest sympathy to Greg’s wife, Helen and children Gavin, Ben and Jennifer.

Obituary by Prof TJ Martin