25 May 1952–13 December 2017

Professor Derek Hart sadly passed away in Sydney 13 December 2017, having been diagnosed with inoperable bowel cancer over a year beforehand.

Derek was born in Christchurch 25 May 1952 to Joe and Monica Hart, and grew up on a five-acre farm on Ham Road. He attended Christ’s College where he regularly won academic prizes over the years, was noted for his abilities working with ceramics and was a school prefect. He found time to follow his love of sport, being a rugged hooker for the 1st XV for two years, and in the summer weekends would join his father and two brothers, Rick and Phil, racing on the family yacht. With Frank Dickson on board, they managed to win the Wellington to Akaroa race on their first and only attempt!

Having made the most of his time at school, which he always credited for giving him a flying start to his subsequent career, Derek easily gained entry to the Otago Medical School and after two years in Dunedin was in the first class to start at the new Christchurch Clinical School in his fourth year. He graduated top of his class with distinction in 1975 and became a house surgeon at Christchurch Hospital. During his four years in Christchurch, Derek continued playing top class rugby, being selected for various Canterbury representative teams.

At the beginning of his house surgeon year, Derek applied for, and was one of two New Zealanders to be granted, a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford England. The other New Zealand recipient that year was Sir John Hood who became a lifelong friend.

In Oxford Derek was at Brasenose College and worked at the Nuffield Department of Surgery under the guidance of another antipodean Sir Peter Morris. A requirement to join the Nuffield Department of Surgery included to undertake surgical training and he completed his initial surgical training in the UK before realising his talents lay in the field of haematology and immunology. He submitted his Doctor of Philosophy thesis on transplantation antigens in 1981. Oxford was a pivotal place for Derek. He learned how to make monoclonal antibodies from Caesar Milstein who later won the Nobel Prize for this work. Derek used this technology to make some of the first monoclonal antibodies to histocompatibility antigens which enabled him to discover interstitial dendritic cells. His subsequent research related to the importance of dendritic cells in many aspects of immune medicine and their modification for immunotherapy. In one of his early seminal papers published in 1981, he predicted that monoclonal antibodies would be useful for controlling immune responses in transplantation and cancer therapy. His most recent work included therapies for decreasing graft-host rejection as well as for cancer treatment.

Derek returned to Christchurch in 1983 where he set up a very productive research laboratory, toured the South Island fundraising to build Ranui House and subsequently took up a post as a consultant haematologist. This included five years as the director of the South Island Bone Marrow Transplantation Unit. His patients universally spoke of his total dedication to their care, as well as his empathy and caring manner. During this time he joined with his fellow haematologist Mike Beard, in publishing what was to become known as “the little blue book”—an indispensable guide for junior doctors in the initial treatment of most medical problems. Although obviously extensively modified it is still a valued guide for house surgeons at Christchurch Hospital today.

In 1998 Derek left Christchurch to take on the role as the Inaugural Director of the Mater Medical Research Institute in Queensland. He left his mark on Queensland: the Mater Medical Research Institute became internationally renowned within its first decade, sat on the Premier’s smart state committee, was recognised as one of Queensland’s “50 best and brightest” and initiated the building of the Translational Research Institute. After a decade in Queensland he moved to the ANZAC Research Institute at the University of Sydney. Here he established the Dendritic Cell Research group focused on true translational research working tirelessly to build the academic, clinical and commercial collaborations to enable the translation of one of the group’s monoclonal antibodies into clinical trial to treat patients who develop graft versus host disease as a result of a bone marrow transplant.

Derek had a prolific and internationally recognised research career. He published 264 peer reviewed papers, 29 book chapters and gave numerous national and international presentations. The quality of this work was underlined with over 1,200 citations with his definitive 1997 review on dendritic cells being cited over 1,000 times.

He was a valued member of various editorial boards, committees for scientific societies including the International Society for Cell Therapy, scientific advisory boards, and journal and grant review panels chairing the Ramaciotti Foundation until shortly before his death.

In 2006 he was made a Royal College of Pathologists Distinguished Fellow for significant and ground-breaking research, he was awarded a Paul Harris Fellowship from The Rotary Foundation and in 2016 won The Leo Dintenfess Memorial award for Excellence in research.

One of Derek’s many great attributes was his enthusiasm to share the credit for his successful career. As noted above, he credited his school and parents for giving him a great start. His time in Oxford certainly launched his research career, along with amazing lifelong friendships, and he remained a strong supporter of the Rhodes community sitting on the selection committee while in Queensland. In regards to his time in Christchurch he always acknowledged the great research team he had there, and the funding he received from the Medical Research Councils as well as funding from a senior doctor’s private family trust, which enabled him to return to Oxford for a sabbatical. He certainly repaid their faith in him.

It was while on sabbatical that Derek courted and finally won over his wife Georgina Clark. Georgina, now an Associate Professor at Sydney University, became the lynchpin of both his research and family teams! There is no doubt that he could not have achieved what he did without her enormous contribution. Georgina, a world-renowned researcher in her own right, continues his enormous research legacy.

As much as Derek loved his work, his greatest love was always his family. Derek was a devoted husband and father, and was rightly very proud of his two children Olivia and James. Derek’s favourite times were always his family holidays—usually to the snow in winter, where he tried to follow the very accomplished Georgina down the slopes without great success, and somewhere by the sea in summer. Having grown up around boats, Derek had a great love of the water. He always had some sort of water craft and his ultimate happy place was on a boat with his family.

Derek had a great love of place and always wanted to live by water. He always lived by the water and together with Georgina built two waterfront homes enticing his children to often comment that it would be nice to live in a finished house before they left home. Despite living in Australia, Derek retained a nine-acre property in Wainui on the Banks Peninsula, which contained two old gun emplacements with resultant magnificent views over Akaroa Harbour. This was the venue for Derek’s annual “Woodstock Wainui” gatherings involving a small tent city, some music, wine and lots of friends. Derek very much valued his friendships and, despite generally living in places far from many, made a great effort to retain them.

As per his wishes, Derek passed away peacefully in his amazing Sydney Harbour home, looking out over the water, surrounded by his wonderful family. Derek leaves behind an extraordinary legacy; a huge volume of ground-breaking research which, with the help of Georgina, he made sure will carry on without him.

Derek was an extraordinary man, a true visionary, who lived-an extraordinary life—driven by that wonderful goal—to cure cancer, sadly not quite in time for himself.

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