Director of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund laboratories who turned the ICRF into a world-renowned organisaton
Sir Michael Stoker, who has died aged 95, was an outstanding cell biologist and a pioneer in the use of mammalian cells grown in the laboratory for the study of cancer. He also, in his characteristically unassuming way, had a major influence on the development of biomedical research in Britain through his involvement in many scientific organisations, especially as director of research at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (now subsumed into Cancer Research UK).
In the early 1950s, as a lecturer in pathology at Cambridge University, Michael became aware of the growing interest in work with animal viruses. Given the opportunity to go to Glasgow in 1959to start a new Institute of Virology with support from the Medical Research Council, he decided to focus his interests on the newly emerging field of cancer-causing viruses.
With his colleague Ian Macpherson, he isolated a hamster-derived near normal cell line that could be transformed by the mouse cancer-causing virus, polyoma, to give rise to cells that had many of the properties of a cancer. The transformed cells no longer responded properly to their "social environment", interacting inappropriately with their neighbours. The cancer-like cells could grow in sparse cultures and without having to attach to a surface, and they showed many other changes. Such work laid the foundations for the enormously increased understanding we now have of the cancer process at the molecular level.
Michael was born in Taunton, Somerset, just after his father returned from the trenches at the end of the first world war and before he settled down as a GP. His father was, according to Michael, kind but rather shy and uncommunicative. One day when Michael was 15 or 16 and they were together on a long car journey, his father suddenly blurted out: "What are you going to do when you leave school?" And almost immediately, he continued: "Well there's the church, the army and medicine." Quick as a flash, Michael answered "medicine" because he was sure he did not want to do the others.
After boarding at Oakham school, in Rutland, he arrived at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1936. Almost immediately after finishing his degree, and completing his clinical qualifications in London, he was sent off in 1943 on active service in India. By that time he was married to Veronica English, whom he had met in Cambridge and who was expecting their first child. He saw neither Veronica nor his son, Christopher, during the three years he was in the army. By good fortune, he was able to take a course in laboratory medicine in Poona (now Pune) taught in part by William Hayes, one of the pioneers of bacterial genetics, and Douglas Black, later to become president of the Royal College of Physicians. That course was the key influence in Michael becoming a laboratory scientist.
After nine successful years in Glasgow, Michael moved to London to become the director of the ICRF research laboratories at Lincoln's Inn Fields. This was an entirely new and larger challenge. He was able to bring with him some of his senior colleagues, including the notable geneticist Guido Pontecorvo (or "Ponte" as he was known to colleagues). At the ICRF Michael brought in genetics and molecular biology as new fields, which were to play a prominent role in cancer research.
His other innovations included clinical research fellowships and external units to cover clinical areas and epidemiology. He eliminated, or "Balkanised" as some called it, the hierarchical research structure, and introduced regular stringent quinquennial scientific reviews. In doing all this, he set the scene for the future success of the ICRF as a world-renowned cancer research organisation.
After he retired from the ICRF at the age of 61, he continued his research at the bench for several years in the way he most enjoyed: direct, hands-on, penetrating observations of cells and their behaviour. This led to the discovery of a "scatter factor" which is now known to play an important role in the relationship between cancer cells and their non-cancerous neighbours. He also spent seven happy years as president of Clare Hall, a graduate spin-out from Clare College.
Michael was involved in many other activities, including the foundation of Celltech, the UK's first biotechnology company. He was vice-president and foreign secretary of the Royal Society, and a member of the scientific committee of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the council of the MRC. His main hobby after he retired was painting, for which he won the Baron ver Heyden de Lancey prize of the Medical Art Society. Michael was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1968 and a CBE in 1974. He was knighted in 1980.
I had the great good fortune to be one of Michael's friends and colleagues for many years, from his time as medical tutor and fellow at Clare College Cambridge, when I was a graduate student there, to his time at the ICRF, where I was his successor as director of research in 1979.
He was very happily married for 62 years to Veronica, who died in 2004. He is survived by his children, Christopher, Jenny, Paul, Robin and Sally.
• Sir Michael George Parke Stoker, cell biologist and research director, born 4 July 1918; died 13 August 2013