John Raymond Hobbs (Professor)

John Raymond Hobbs BSc Hons, MD, BS, MRCS, DObst., RCOG, FRCP, FRCPath., FRCPaed. is a Professor of medicine who was at the for-front of the techniques of Clinical Immunology, Protein Biochemistry and Bone Marrow Transplantation, specifically in Child Health.

John Hobbs was born in Aldershot on the 17th April 1929. He was the third son of four male children of a soldier’s Family. He left school at 16 and worked as a pathology Laboratory assistant and did his National Service in Egypt with the British Army Medical Corps. After National Service, John used the money he had saved from his army pay to put himself into Plymouth and Devonport Technical College were he achieved an External Inter.B.Sc. gaining a state scholarship to study medicine, where he chose the Middlesex Hospital in London. He specialized in Pathology and in 1963 was appointed consultant at Hammersmith Hospital, London. In 1970 he was appointed as Professor of Chemical Pathology at Westminster Medical School. In the early 1970’s Professor Hobbs’s Westminster team were doing groundbreaking work. In 1970 the world’s first successful intended stem cell transplant for a previously fatal human disease. In 1971 the first British Bone Marrow Transplant using bone marrow from a matching sibling. In the following year a transplant was successful using the bone marrow from father to son. In April of 1973 Professor Hobbs and his team were able to achieve the worlds first bone marrow transplant using a matched but unrelated volunteer donor. With the success of this procedure step were taken by professor Hobbs's team to set up the worlds first unrelated bone marrow donor register. The tissue typing specialist of the team, Doctor David James was instrumental in the setting up and the administration of this groundbreaking register which established the future use of unrelated donors to patients which so far is over 10.000 people. This initiative was the blue print which would be copied around the world. The Westminster team completed 285 transplants before it and its specialist unit’s sudden and unexpected, enforced closer, effectively in autumn of 1992. Tragically, this left a waiting list of children with virtually nowhere else in Britain to go for treatment of their genetic diseases and inborn errors. However Professor Hobbs had founded the correction of genetic diseases by transplantation or COGENT movement, with a charitable trust. Thus the work was able to be continued at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in the city of Bristol headed by Dr Colin Steward MA (Cantab), BM, BCh (Oxon), PhD (Bristol), FRCPCH, FRCP. .As for the children who were treated by Professor Hobbs’s bone marrow team at the Westminster hospital, most of these children now enjoy full lives as adults.

Achievements

 * In Clinical Immunology, first to describe IgA deficiency in 1968 follwed by IgM deficiency
 * In Protein Biochemistry – MRC Myeloma Trials, the first to describe the natural history of myelomatosis in 1965 and helping to set up the Protein Reference Unit which saves the national health service 3 million pounds each year. John Hobbs retired as chairman in 1994.
 * He lead the Westminster Children’s Bone Marrow Transplantation unit in its pioneering work along with his role as head of Chemical Pathology and Immunology.