Molecular Imaging pioneer Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, passed away on Saturday, July 18, from cancer. He was 57.
From the earliest days of his career, Gambhir’s efforts focused on bringing his unusual background — a physicist-mathematician turned physician-scientist — to bear on improving patient health by developing technologies that could reveal early signs of disease, especially cancer. Of his many research efforts, the creation of PET reporter gene expression Imaging was among the most impactful, earning him a reputation as a founding father of molecular Imaging.
Gambhir’s intense scrutiny of the molecular traces of disease and his efforts to design and iterate on detection technology always came back to one thing: his desire to make a tangible impact on patients.
Our thoughts and sympathy go out to his loved ones. He will be greatly missed in the Nuclear medicine community.