Dr. Saul Hertz (1905–1950) Discovers the Medical Uses of Radioactive Iodine: The First Targeted Cancer Therapy

Abstract

Dr. Saul Hertz spontaneously posed the question "Could iodine be made radioactive artificially?" to the MIT President Karl Compton, on November 12, 1936. MGH's Dr. Hertz and his MIT collaborator, Dr. Arthur Roberts, were the first and the foremost to develop the experimental data for the medical uses of radioiodine (RAI) and apply it in the clinical setting. Dr. Hertz expanded the successful use of RAI of treating hyperthyroidism, Graves‘ disease, to the treatment of thyroid cancer in 1946. Dr. Saul Hertz established the Radioactive Isotope Research Institute to diagnose and treat thyroid cancer, which he believed held the key to the larger problem of cancer in general. RAI is the first and gold standard of targeted cancer therapies.

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