Professor Yuriy N. Bordyushkov

Professor Yuriy N. Bordyushkov, MD, Doctor of Medical Sciences, representative of the excellent cohort of the Rostov School of Oncologists, who holds the lead in research in the field of adaptation and increase of nonspecific antitumor resistance by a human organism, and, in general, who has pioneered in identifying the growth points in fundamental oncology.

After leaving school, a young, tall, handsome man, with refined face features and thin fingers of a violinist, decided not to make the career path of a musician, but to do the difficult and noble profession of Medical Doctor. Student Yuriy Bordyushkov graduated magna cum laude from the Rostov-on-Don Medical High School and began his rural generalist practice, where he faced the harsh reality of rural life and, sparing no effort, applied all his knowledge and skills to his noble occupation. But fate took him in a different direction: the talent of the young scientist was appreciated, when he was an MD student. So, in his third year at the Medical High School, he conducted experiments at the Department of Physiology aimed at identifying the ratio between the cerebral and peripheral blood circuit supply in dogs, using a capsule implanted in the parietal bone of the animal skull that served as a pulsation transmitter of the brain blood vessels to a kymograph. It happened at the very research office by Professor Maria A. Ukolova, where in another corner thereof, a young girl student began conducting her experiments (it was Elena Ukolova, Maria A.Ukolova’s daughter, Elena Kvakina under her married name). The young MD girl student experimented on white rats, in order to study their reflexes upon administration of medical drugs, producing blood clotting effects. So, that was the research environment which laid down the groundwork for scientific creativity of the future researchers there.

After the establishment of the experimental department at the Rostov Oncological Institute, headed by Prof. Maria A. Ukolova, a team of young, enthusiastic, daring, scientists, was created, ready to implement every most challenging research idea or concept. The research team was composed of Lyubov Garkavi, Yuriy Bordyushkov, Elena Kvakina and some other employees. It was an interesting time, when every one of them worked at the lab until 11 pm, making best efforts in completing its individual part of the joint experiment project. Yuriy N. Bordyushkov developed and proposed its own technique for direct electrical stimulation of the hypothalamic nuclei, which made it possible to identify an important role of the structures in the mechanism of increasing antitumor resistance in an organism. That was a priority area in experimental oncology at that time, and it enabled in the future to develop qualitatively different methods of influencing the hypothalamic-pituitary system for the purpose of antitumor therapy. In 1971, he wrote his Ph.D. thesis: On the Role of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary System in the Mechanisms of Increasing the Organism's Resistance (on a Tumor Process Model), and upon his appointment as the Chief of the Laboratory of Experimental Hormone Therapy of Cancer, he actually laid the foundation for translational medicine.

For the first time in Russia, Yuriy N.Bordyushkov developed and introduced into clinical oncology an original method of endoliquor hormone therapy. By applying the system analysis to oncology (the discriminant function, the "decisive rule"), he showed the need to monitor a set of parameters for the selection of the proper prognostic criteria for the effectiveness of therapy, for example, in generalized breast cancer (with endoliquor therapy) or in esophageal cancer (with immune- and radiotherapy method in cancer treatment). Based on an assessment of the level of free radicals, he offered new ways for determining sensitivity to anticancer drugs and demonstrated their adequacy in clinical practice. He proposed a new method of endoliquor therapy for estrogen-resistant forms of prostate and renal cancer. The endoliquor hormonal therapy of tumors as a priority line therein was supplemented by endoliquor chemotherapy of the CNS tumors. Yuriy N.Bordyushkov pioneered in the study of the mechanism of action produced by magnetic field according to changes in the histochemical parameters of the neurosecretory nuclei of the hypothalamus and its membranotropic effect on the cells of the body, including effects made on their receptor apparatus in accordance with the indices of proliferative activity, immune homeostasis and changes in the transport function of blood cells, bone marrow and splenocytes with respect to chemotherapy drugs, hormones and mediators.

The creative potential of Yuriy N. Bordyushkov made it possible to realize a number of excellent, challenging, ideas and formulate an original concept of the multi-linked regulation of the antitumor resistance by the functional ontogenetic system of the organism integrity, which was confirmed by the expression of different oncogenes with the appearance of the same tumor.

This incomplete list of the Bordyushkov’s developments in the field of pathogenesis of malignant tumors testifies to the strong power of his intellect, intuition, and scientific courage, making him a Great Scientist. The fundamental features of his personality were complemented by a completely childlike enthusiastic perception of all new, original, things in general. It should be mentioned, his wife was the great love of his life, together with Her Majesty Music. Delightedly playing the violin, he expressed all his greatest tenderness and admiration both for the wonderful art and science! Such prominent personalities as Yuriy N. Bordyushkov leave the unquenchable light for future generations of scientists. So, we think this issue of our Cardiometry journal can be appropriately integrated into the image of this talented scientist, who has devoted all his life to development of the fundamental aspects in oncology. And if we refer to the themes and subjects of our scientific conference, the abstracts of which are published herein, then we can derive only one conclusion: Forward is the only way to go in science!