William French Anderson

William French Anderson is a distinguished professor of biochemistry and pediatrics in the field of Medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, where he served as Director of the Gene Therapy Laboratories at the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He received his B.A. from Harvard University in 1958, M.A. from Cambridge University in 1960, and M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1963. After completing an internship at Children's Hospital Medical Center in Boston and postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, he joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1965. At NIH, Anderson worked in Marshall Nirenberg's laboratory contributing to the elucidation of the genetic code. He later became Chief of the Section of Human Biochemistry in the National Heart Institute's Laboratory of Molecular Hematology, dedicating his research to developing gene therapy for genetic diseases. During his 27-year tenure at NIH, he taught molecular genetics at George Washington University School of Medicine.

In 1992, Anderson transitioned to USC to lead gene therapy efforts. His groundbreaking achievements include directing the first approved introduction of a foreign gene into a human patient in 1989 and the inaugural gene therapy treatment in September 1990 for a four-year-old girl with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) due to adenosine deaminase deficiency. This pioneering procedure, along with subsequent treatments, marked the birth of human gene therapy. Notable publications encompass "Prospects for human gene therapy" in Science (1984), "Gene expression in mice after high efficiency retroviral-mediated gene transfer" in Science (1985), "Self-inactivating retroviral vectors designed for transfer of whole genes into mammalian cells" in PNAS (1986), and "Expression of human adenosine deaminase in nonhuman primates after retrovirus-mediated gene transfer" in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (1987). Anderson has been honored with the King Faisal International Prize in Medicine (1994) for medical applications of genetic engineering, the Presidential Meritorious Rank Award, Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and others including the Mary Ann Liebert Biotherapeutics Prize. He founded and edited Human Gene Therapy journal, influencing ethical standards and advancing the field, with his methods now utilized in over 25 global centers.