E. Donnall Thomas, a physician who pioneered bone marrow transplants and later won the 1990 Nobel Prize in medicine, has died in Seattle at age 92.

The Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Centre announced the death and a spokesman said the cause was heart disease.

Thomas’s groundbreaking work is among the greatest success stories in the treatment of leukaemia.

Bone marrow transplantation and its sister therapy, blood stem cell transplantation, have improved the survival rates for some blood cancers to upward of 90 per cent from almost zero.

This year, a total of some 60,000 transplants will be performed worldwide.

Larry Corey, the president of the research centre, said Thomas will forever be known as the father of bone marrow transplantation but to his colleagues he will be remembered as a colleague and a mentor.

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