Thomas S. Edgington M.D.

LA JOLLA — Thomas S. Edgington M.D., a world-renowned scientist and leader in the fields of immunopathology and vascular biology passed away in La Jolla, California on January 22, 2021 at the age of 88 from natural causes.

Born in Los Angeles in 1932, Dr. Tom Edgington was educated at Stanford University, from where he held Bachelor of Arts degrees in Physics, Electrical Engineering, Eastern European History and Biology, and also received a Doctor of Medicine degree. He embarked on his long and distinguished medical career in 1957, served his internship at the University of Pennsylvania’s hospital where he worked on an early form of the heartlung machine, and then completed residencies in pathology and hematopathology at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine.

In 1960, Tom and his wife Joanne emigrated to Japan at the request of the U.S. Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission to conduct research on the cause

February 10, 1932 - January 22, 2021 of increased leukemia rates in Hiroshima. After discovering the chromosomal break that caused the cancer, Tom returned to Los Angeles in 1965 where he served as Assistant Professor of Clinical Pathology in UCLA’S School of Medicine. He continued his professional growth at the Communicable Disease Center in Atlanta, Georgia, then returned to California to complete a senior postdoctoral fellowship with the Department of Experimental Pathology at the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation. He followed that service with a fellowship in nuclear medicine at the Atomic Energy Commission in Oak Ridge, Indiana, before returning to California where he founded and headed the Department

of Anatomic Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Scripps. He remained there for 55 years.

In 2009, Tom retired from The Scripps Research Institute as an Emeritus Professor, Department of Immunology and Microbiology. Over the course of his prestigious career, he was awarded 70 patents for his research discoveries, published 462 scientific papers which have been cited in 19,000 published scientific papers. He was founder and Chair of the Board of Directors of Corvas International, Inc., and also founded Molecular Biology Consultants Inc., Molecular Medicine Foundation, Biosequences Ltd., and Nuvas LLC; as well as serving as a director of Apollon, one of the earliest DNA vaccine companies, and as a member of the scientific advisory board of Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc.

Committed to a strong national agenda in the biomedical sciences and translation, Tom served as the President of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine.

Tom’s greatest scientific achievement was the cloning of tissue factor and identifying the specific pathways it regulates in the coagulation system, which earned him numerous national and international awards.

Tom’s wife and the mother of his children, Joanne Edgington, predeceased him after 48 years of marriage. He is survived by his second wife of 14 years Sandra Mary Edgington; daughter Kassy Perry; son, Scott Edgington; grandchildren, Morgan, Kaitlin, Katy and Thomas. Sandra’s three adult children and grandchildren became an important part of his later life as well.

Tom was a beloved father, husband, mentor and friend and will live on in the hearts and minds of his community, peers, friends, family and the more than 70 postdoctoral fellows he trained throughout his career.

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