Anthony N. van den Pol (1949–2020)

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Anthony (Tony) N. van den Pol, PhD, Professor of Neurosurgery and Professor of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, died October 28, 2020 at the age of 71.¹ Tony received his bachelor’s degree from Occidental College in biology and psychology in 1971. His graduate training in psychobiology was at Yale University. He received his PhD in 1977. Tony did a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropharmacology at Oxford University, then returned to Yale University School of Medicine and rose through the ranks to Professor of Neurosurgery. Tony had an impressively broad spectrum of research interests. Throughout his highly productive research career, he made many contributions to basic neuroscience, particularly in the area of amino acid and peptide neurotransmitters in hypothalamic neurons.

Readers of this journal will likely remember Tony’s many contributions to the field of oncolytic viruses. Several decades ago, he developed an interest in viral infections of the brain and did a sabbatical in the laboratories of Ed Mocarski and Jeff Vieira at Stanford University. This led to Tony’s research on human and murine cytomegalovirus infections of the brain and subsequently on infections by many other viruses. Tony’s research on oncolytic viruses as potential treatments for brain tumors was a natural extension of this work. He was relentless in addressing the challenging question of strategies that were effective in eliminating brain tumors without toxicity in the normal brain. Among his novel contributions was the identification of the parvovirus LuIII, the most effective among a series of parvoviruses he tested and a virus that is relatively insensitive to interferons, which can limit the effectiveness of other viruses.² Another example was the demonstration that substitution of the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) glycoprotein with glycoproteins from heterologous viruses ameliorated its neurotoxicity while retaining its oncolytic activity.³

On a personal level, Tony was an engaging and entertaining scientist. His humorous skepticism and lively enthusiasm will be sorely missed. As one of his colleagues at Yale stated: “Brilliant scientist, better person.” Tony is survived by wife, Dr. Kelly Marten, his children, Tessa and Jacob, and his brother Rick van den Pol.¹