In Memoriam: Julian B. Marsh (1926–2018)

Julian Marsh, a pioneer in lipid and lipoprotein metabolism research and past Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lipid Research, died on November 16, 2018, at the age of 92 years. He is pre-deceased by his wife Priscilla and survived by a daughter, Gail, and two grandchildren. Dr. Marsh spent most of his career in Philadelphia and was a beloved mentor and colleague to many investigators in the lipid field, including the authors of this tribute.

Dr. Marsh was born in New York City in 1926 and attended the High School of Music and Art in Harlem. He moved to Philadelphia to study chemistry as an undergraduate and then medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and obtained his MD degree at the young age of 21 years. After conducting postdoctoral work in biochemistry at Penn in the laboratory of David Drabkin, he spent a year at the Walter Reed Army Research Institute. In 1954, he joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania as Assistant Professor of Biochemistry. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960 to study at the Medical Research Council Laboratory in London where he investigated fatty acid metabolism with Anthony James. He moved quickly through the ranks at Penn, becoming Professor in 1963 and Chairman of the Biochemistry Department at the Dental School for the period 1965–1975.

While at Penn, Julian collaborated with his post-doctoral mentor Dr. Drabkin and other colleagues to publish a series of papers on the effects of nephrosis on lipoprotein metabolism, an interest he maintained for much of his career. Another long-standing interest was the biosynthesis of lipoproteins and, in collaboration with Arthur Whereat, he used rat liver slices and perfusates to investigate this topic. A 1959 paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry reported the first measurement of the rate of synthesis of cholesterol in secreted lipoproteins. Another important contribution from his time at Penn was the development of a simple charring method for rapid quantitation of lipids, for example, in column chromatography fractions (published with David Weinstein in JLR, 1966).

In 1975, Dr. Marsh moved to the Medical College of Pennsylvania to become Chair of the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, a position he held until 1984. In collaboration with George Rothblat, he recruited faculty to form a research group that became well known as the Philadelphia Lipid Group for its contributions to understanding lipoprotein metabolism. The group was supported for a total of 35 years by a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute-funded Program Project grant and a National Instititues of Health-funded Training grant. Dr. Marsh’s outstanding leadership skills and mentorship abilities were critical to the development and success of these endeavors. At the Medical College of Pennsylvania, he mentored three of the authors and promoted our interests in biomedical research in the lipoprotein field. Julian recruited M.C.P. from England and facilitated his entry into the US lipoprotein research community. As a member of the same research group, M.C.P. benefited from many enriching discussions with Julian about lipoprotein metabolism and also from his insightful comments on draft manuscripts.

Julian recruited E.A.F. as a junior faculty member, actively mentored him, and continued to collaborate with him even after he moved to New York, leaving a record of multiple joint publications. Shortly after returning from a sabbatical leave with Paul Nestel in Australia, a leader in the effects of fish oils on VLDL production, he infected E.A.F. with his enthusiasm and helped immeasurably in getting his studies in this area off the ground. This included not only direct mentorship, but sharing his wide “network” of scientific colleagues; for example, travel to Rochester to learn how to make primary rat hepatocytes and perform pulse-chase analyses of protein synthesis and degradation from Charles and Janet Sparks. In characteristic fashion, Julian generously ceded leadership of his project on the aforementioned Program Project grant to E.A.F., resulting in a series of papers showing how the fatty acids in fish oils, EPA, and DHA regulated the post-translational degradation of apoB.

In addition to his role as Department Chair and faculty mentor, Julian was a dedicated mentor of students. As a first year medical student with no experience in biomedical research, D.J.R. made the fortuitous decision to spend a summer working in the laboratory of Julian and his close collaborator Charles Sparks. A key focus of their research at that time was the differential metabolism of apoB100 and apoB48 (which they referred to in conversation as “big B” and “little B”) well before the discovery of apoB mRNA editing. Julian was a remarkably attentive mentor and immersed himself in ensuring that not only the scientific concepts but also the methodologic details (in this case, of rat liver perfusion, endogenous labeling, and separation of big B and little B) were effectively taught and firmly learned. Julian permitted D.J.R. to continue working in his laboratory throughout medical school and without a doubt was the stimulus for D.J.R.’s entry into the lipoprotein field. Julian also supervised MD/PhD candidate Joseph Bass on a nephrotic syndrome project that led to several publications on apoE and apoA-I in nephrosis. Dr. Bass is presently a renowned molecular endocrinologist at Northwestern University.

In addition to those mentioned above, Julian collaborated with Dennis Cryer, Paul Coates, and Jean Cortner at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn to establish the methodology for studying human apolipoprotein metabolism using endogenous stable isotopic labeling, initially publishing this work in JLR in 1986. Endogenous labeling with stable isotopes has the advantage of allowing for the simultaneous kinetic analyses of multiple apolipoproteins and permits studies in children and women of child-bearing age. The methodology pioneered by Julian and his colleagues was rapidly adopted by many other investigators, including E.J.S. and D.J.R., albeit with deuterated leucine instead of N¹⁵ glycine. The methodology has been extensively used to understand lipoprotein metabolism in humans. Dr. Marsh retired from the Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1998; shortly thereafter, the Julian Marsh Faculty Scholar Award was created. Now an annual award at Drexel University College of Medicine (which includes the legacy of the Medical College of Pennsylvania), there have been 15 distinguished award winners to date.

After his retirement, Julian moved to Boston to be near his daughter and took the opportunity to begin a collaboration with E.J.S. by becoming a visiting scientist in the Lipid Metabolism Laboratory at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. At weekly laboratory meetings and journal clubs, Julian never hesitated to provide his insights, make presentations, and provide suggestions with regard to our lipoprotein metabolic studies. He greatly helped E.J.S., Alice Lichtenstein, and Stefania Lamon-Fava in carrying out human apolipoprotein metabolic studies. Moreover, his former research assistant Margaret Diffenderfer took over the responsibilty for the technical aspects of these studies. Many of his colleagues honored Dr. Marsh at the time of his 80th birthday in 2006 when a symposium on high density lipoprotein metabolism was held at Tufts University. A special luncheon honoring Julian at the time of his 90th birthday in 2016 allowed many former colleagues to call in and congratulate him.

Julian Marsh was a man of character and his warmth and compassion enabled people to relate to him readily. His advice was invariably wise and often leavened by humorous puns. Always willing to help solve any problem, scientific or other, Julian was an oasis of calm and sage advice, focused on pragmatic problem-solving. As Peg Diffenderfer commented after years of seeing a procession of people at all levels, from graduate students to department chairs, come to his office, he was truly a “Mr. Fix-it.” His scientific abilities are reflected in his over 100 publications, many of which have become points of reference, and being appointed Editor-in-Chief of JLR from 1983 to 1986. He also served as Chair of the Lipoprotein Metabolism Gordon Research Conference in 1982 (Fig. 2) and Chair of the American Heart Association Arteriosclerosis Council in 1986–1988. His teaching was of the highest quality and in 1977 he won the Lindback Award for excellence in teaching. Julian was also a Renaissance man who, in addition to his scientific prowess, possessed exceptional musical and athletic abilities. He pursued his musical skills as a viola player for many years in the Philadelphia Doctor’s Orchestra and, later, in the Wellesley Symphony Orchestra. He played tennis at a very high level, such that, at many Lipoprotein Gordon Research Conferences, much younger opponents were seen to be losing while doing all the running!

Fig. 2.

Participants of the Gordon Conference on Lipid Metabolism held June 21–25^th, 1982, at Kimball Union Academy, Meriden, NH and chaired by Julian B. Marsh (front row center). Those pictured in the photograph include (listed alphabetically): Bo Angelin, David Atkinson, Gerd Assmann, Ulrike Beisiegel, Gunilla Bengtsson-Olivecrona, Andre Bensadoun, Thomas Bersot, David Bilheimer, Jan Breslow, Bryan Brewer, Eliot Brinton, Howard Brockman, John Brunzell, David Capuzzi, George Chacko, Larry Chan, Suzanne Clark, Margot Cleary, Alan Cooper, Jean Cortner, Dennis Cryer, Jean Davignon, Roger Davis, Richard Deckelbaum, Lad Dory, Celina Edelstein, Howard Eder, Shlomo Eisenberg, Christopher Fielding, Phoebe Fielding, Waldo Fisher, Linda Gallo, James Gaylor, Sandra Gianturco, Louis Gidez, Henry Ginsberg, Jane Glick, Robert Glickman, Heiner Greten, James Hamilton, Robert Hamilton, Richard Havel, Murray Heimberg, Jeffrey Hoeg, Ana Jonas, Brian Krause, Ronald Krauss, Andras Lacko, Ann Lees, Robert Lees, Kenneth Lippel, Sissel Lund-Katz, Yves Marcel, Robert Mahley, Julian Marsh, Walter McConathy, Joel Morrisett, Nicholas Myant, Paul Nestel, Robert Nicolosi, Thomas Olivecrona, Jack Oram, James Paterniti, Bruce Patterson, Michael Phillips, Donald Puppione, Christian Raetz, Paul Roheim, Drago Reichl, Larry Rudel, Ernst Schaefer, Wolfgang Schneider, Robert Scow, Jere Segrest, Roy Silverstein, Donald Small, Anton Stalenhoef, John Swaney, Alan Tall, Gloria Vega, Moseley Waite, Ira Weinstein, Henry Wilcox, Joseph Witztum, Ai-Lien Wu, Loren Zech, Donald Zilversmit.

Julian Marsh was the true embodiment of a gentleman and a scholar. He leaves a legacy of not only groundbreaking scientific discovery in lipid and lipoprotein metabolism, but a community of scholars around the world whom he trained, mentored, and provided collaborative advice. He will be remembered with great admiration and grateful affection.