Date of birth: 01/01/1947

BIOGRAPHY

Machover is a French oncologist best known for the discovery in 1982 that the effectiveness of fluoropyrimidines in colorectal and gastric cancers could be enhanced by addition of folates. He showed that adding folates improved inhibition of thymidylate synthase, the target of the fluoropyrimidines. Machover reported the first phase II study of fluorouracil (5FU) and high-dose folinic acid (leucovorin) in patients with advanced colorectal and gastric carcinoma, demonstrating improved disease free and overall survival times. Ultimately, this work led to an expanded role for folates and fluoropyrimidines in chemotherapy.

Machover received his medical degree from the University of Paris in 1976. He is the former head of the cancer department at Paul Brousse Hospital, Paris, and is emeritus professor of oncology at the University of Paris-Saclay. Here he researches modulation of fluoropyrimidines by high concentrations of vitamin B6, effects of L-methionine deprivation on cancer cells, and bio-engineering of L-methionine gamma-lyases for use in vivo.

Other notable achievements include clinical development of the levorotatory stereoisomer of folinic acid for modulation of the fluoropyrimidines (1992); the original description of the oxaliplatin-containing regimens DHAOx and R-DHAOx for treatment of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (in 2001 and 2010); the discovery of the modulation of fluoropyrimidines by folinic acid and vitamin B6 in tandem (2018), and its translation in the clinic (2021); and discovery of cytotoxic activity and epigenetic changes in cancer cells by the methionine gamma-lyase from Brevibacterium aurantiacum (2019).