Milton Ende (9 December 1918–27 June 2007), physician, was the son of Abraham Samuel Ende and Elsie Schlajen Ende, Polish immigrants who operated a general store in Petersburg. He was born in New York City, where his parents had journeyed during the flu epidemic in search of better medical care for his birth. Growing up in the family apartment over his parents' store, he decided at a young age to become a doctor. Ende graduated from Richmond College (later the University of Richmond) in 1940 and began studying at the Medical College of Virginia (later Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine), earning his M.D. in 1943. After completing an internship at the Medical College of Virginia in September 1944, Ende became a medical officer in the United States Army. For the remaining months of World War II, he tended wounded soldiers on trains headed for hospitals throughout the country. Following the end of the war in Europe, he served in Italy and was discharged from service in October 1946 with the rank of captain.
In February 1947 Ende began a residency in internal medicine at the Veterans' Administration Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and stayed to complete a fellowship in hematology. He returned to Petersburg in 1950 and opened a private practice, specializing in internal medicine. On 4 March 1951 Ende married Helen Irene Magid, of Colonial Heights. They had two sons, both of whom followed their father into medical practice. Over the course of a medical career lasting more than a half-century, Ende established the first hemodialysis unit in the Petersburg area. Deeply devoted to his community, he also worked to supply local rescue squads in Petersburg, Hopewell, and Colonial Heights with equipment for advanced cardiac life support.
Ende and his brother, pathologist Norman Ende, were pioneers in stem cell research. Early in the 1960s, while treating adult patients with leukemia, Ende wondered why infants rarely seemed to have cancer. He pondered whether something in their blood might keep them from contracting the disease. Conducting experiments during the 1960s, he and his brother discovered that discarded umbilical cord blood could help improve the condition of terminal cancer patients and even extend their lives. Later, the brothers demonstrated that umbilical cord blood could provide human stem cells in bone marrow transplantation. Their findings, published as "Hematopoietic Transplantation by Means of Fetal (Cord) Blood: A New Method," in the March 1972 Virginia Medical Monthly had no immediate impact, but in the 1980s a number of medical journals began to take note of the Ende brothers' major contributions. Subsequently the Endes proposed the creation of cord blood banks, with the potential of giving patients an entirely new immune system.
The proposal had the merit of bypassing ongoing controversies over the use of embryonic stem cells. Skeptics contended that for families with no history of leukemia, storage would be an unnecessary expense, with little likelihood of their children contracting cancer. Research on cord blood banks continued, however, and public and private cord blood banks were organized in the United States and worldwide. Like Ende, a significant group of medical practitioners believed that cord blood therapy could eventually replace bone marrow transplantation, helping to mitigate the ongoing problems of an inadequate supply of bone marrow donors. The transplantation of cord blood into children facing life-threatening illnesses revolutionized the field of pediatric hematology and oncology.
During the 1970s Ende noticed in his practice that increasing numbers of patients were suffering from multiple myeloma, which had been the cause of death of his mother-in-law and her brother. His research identified an apparent clustering of the disease in Petersburg in an area where industrial plants and private homes were in close proximity. In a 1979 article he noted that the effect might be coincidental, but he posited that the highly concentrated industrial presence was associated with the high rate of occurrence of the disease. Throughout his career Ende published articles on fetal cord blood, case studies, and topics such as pain management and the benefits of golf for cardiac patients in such medical journals as the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Journal of Emergency Medicine, Life Sciences, and Virginia Medical Monthly. In the year before his death Ende co-authored a poster describing a laboratory study of human umbilical cord blood used in mice that was presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the College of American Pathologists.
On the morning of 27 June 2007 Milton Ende saw patients in his office as usual and died of heart failure in Petersburg that afternoon. He was buried next to his wife, who had died in 2001, at Brith Achim Cemetery in Petersburg. In 2008 the General Assembly passed a memorial resolution celebrating the life of Ende, both as a physician and a pioneer in the field of stem cell research.
Sources Consulted:
Birth date on gravestone; information provided by sons Frederick Ende and Mark Ende, 2009; Marriage Certificate, Petersburg, Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); Richmond Times-Dispatch, 13 May 1990, 27 Dec. 1993; Petersburg Progress-Index, 10 Aug. 2007; Laboratory Medicine 31 (2000): 672–677; Scientific American 284 (Apr. 2001): 44–49; Scarab 51 (spring 2002): 2, 31; Richmond Alumni Magazine 67 (winter 2005): 29; obituary and memorial in Petersburg Progress-Index, 30 June 2007; obituary in Richmond Times-Dispatch, 30 June 2007 (portrait).