Jack Hoopes, DVM, PhD, professor of surgery and radiation oncology at Geisel School of Medicine, and adjunct professor of engineering at Thayer School of Engineering, died on Sunday, August 10.
Known for a dedication to his work and to teaching and mentoring undergraduates, graduate students, and surgical residents during their research year, Hoopes spent 37 years at Dartmouth as a translational scientist where he focused on collaborative research projects developing biomedical and biomedical engineering innovations such as magnetic nanoparticle cancer treatment. A cancer researcher specializing in pathology and radiation oncology, he directed the Surgery and Radiation Research Laboratories for the past 29 years, and in 2009 became director of Dartmouth’s Center for Comparative Medicine and Research.
His work in the pathogenesis and moderation of radiation injury in the brain, contributes to a better understanding of the cascade of adverse events that follow radiation therapy and may also help to determine whether higher curative doses of radiation can be safely delivered to tumors that are surrounded by normal tissue.
With additional training in veterinary pathology, Hoopes’s interest in research began during a two-year residency program in zoo animal medicine and pathology at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. His experience in the zoo’s intensive research program, one of a handful in existence, led Hoopes to earn a PhD in pathology and radiation biology.
When he arrived at Geisel (then Dartmouth Medical School) in 1988, his early research focused on a National Institutes of Health-funded project to determine the toxicity and efficacy of interstitial radiation and hyperthermia in the treatment of brain tumors. Friendly and respectful with a penchant for collaboration and a natural ability to facilitate research projects, Hoopes participated in a variety of endeavors, including mitigating radiation-induced heart damage by timing radiation to a specific part of the heart cycle, creating mathematical models for real-time prediction and assessment of brain movement during surgery, and studying the feasibility and efficacy of photodynamic therapy in the treatment of cancer and non-cancer diseases.
As an adjunct professor at Thayer, his research encompassed experimental cancer therapeutics including radiation, chemotherapy, hyperthermia, photodynamic therapy, nanotechnology (iron oxide nanoparticle hyperthermia cancer treatment), and the development of new treatments and surgical techniques for treating spontaneous tumors in animals.
Douglas Van Citters, PhD, interim dean and professor of engineering at Thayer, says "Jack epitomized the collaborative spirit of 'One Dartmouth.' He was intensely curious about everyone else’s research while opening his own laboratory to anyone who wanted to try something new or gather preliminary data. His enthusiasm for his job and our community is best encapsulated by his humble answer to my question a few years ago about how his summer was going: “Hey man, pretty good. The students and I are just working on curing cancer.'”
“Jack welcomed me to Dartmouth in 1996 and within two years we became the first (and perhaps last) people to have synchronized a radiation beam to a rat’s beating heart, demonstrating that the myocardium can be spared from radiation damage by delivering the radiation at end systole when the muscle is radio-hypoxic,” recalls longtime colleague David J. Gladstone, ScD, a research professor at Thayer and adjunct professor of medicine at Geisel.
“It then occurred to us we could use clinical resources to probe otherwise inaccessible processes via animal models. Collaborative studies were performed combining hypo-fractionated radiation therapy with iron nanoparticles to modulate physical and electrical energy deposition, inactivated viruses to stimulate the immune system, and most recently, ultra-high dose rate delivery to spare normal tissues through the ‘FLASH’ effect,” he says.
Much of this work was carried out on spontaneous tumor models in pets allowing for long-term follow up. This treatment would later serve as a model for treating human cancer. Gladstone says Hoopes’s spirit and enthusiasm for collaboration “helped make the impossible happen—animals with otherwise incurable disease survived for years.
“I will miss Jack and although we will all keep on keeping on, I suspect that for some time we will also ‘have a hitch in our get-along.’”
Hoopes also taught two engineering courses at Thayer: Introduction to Quantum Technologies that prepares students for future transformative technologies and was course director of Introduction to Biomedical Engineering, which introduced undergraduates to applications of engineering principles to medical diagnosis/treatment of disease, monitoring/measurement of physiological function, and rehabilitation/replacement of body dysfunction.
“Giving a lecture every spring for Jack’s introduction to biomedical engineering course at Thayer was an annual highlight,” says Charles R. Thomas, Jr. MD, chair and professor of radiation oncology and applied science and of medicine at Geisel and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
Named director of the Surgery, Radiation Oncology, and Bioengineering Laboratories in 1996, Hoopes kept track of a multitude of projects funded by corporate contracts and NIH grants, including overseeing seven wet labs, labs for five bioengineers, three experimental operating rooms, a laser laboratory, and a device to deliver radiation therapy. The research component of the surgery residency program, which now includes an obligatory year of research experience, is also under the auspices of the laboratories.
Hoopes’s innate sense of service to others, reflected in his selfless giving, mentorship, and advocacy, endures through the lives of the people and animals he helped. He was a longtime participant in The Prouty Ultimate for most of his career at Dartmouth, cycling with his daughter Mollie for many years. A dedicated and faithful fan of the Dartmouth track and field program, he, and Mollie, travelled to the July 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, OR to support Dartmouth athletes.
While struggling through end stage disease, concern for his students remained steadfast as he continued teaching and managing his lab without wavering, Gladstone notes. “When we last visited, as he was rallying enough energy to be released from the hospital, he asked, ‘How are the students doing?’”
A memorial service for Hoopes will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 6, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Hanover. A reception will follow.
