Dr. Robert H. Broyles

Robert H. Broyles, Founder and President of The Sickle Cell Cure Foundation, and Chief Science Officer of EpimedX, died suddenly on August 15, 2018. He was born in Kingsport, Tennessee, on February 16, 1943, and grew up in South Charleston, West Virginia. He earned a BS (chemistry) and PhD (biochemistry) from Wake Forest University and its Medical Center and obtained post-doctoral training with a National Institute of Health fellowship from Florida State University. Dr. Broyles served five years as an Assistant Professor of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and 32 years of professorships in the College of Medicine at the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Broyles served as Senior Scientist at the National Institutes of Health in the Hematology Program and the Laboratory of Chemical Biology of NIDDK, as a Lecturer in the Embryology Course of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and as Research Member of the Free Radical Biology and Aging Research Program at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. He had nearly forty years of research experience and numerous publications and presentations on gene regulation therapy for sickle cell disease, supported by grants as a principal Investigator including grants from the NIH. He devoted decades in pursuit of a cure for sickle cell anemia, a disease that afflicts millions and causes terrible suffering. He and his colleagues were moving toward clinical trials of the treatment developed through this research, which offers hope to sickle cell patients worldwide. He was not only a dedicated biomedical scientist, teacher, and mentor, but also an avid tennis player for many years, photographer, and poet. He published his work in numerous journals and read in many venues, including the Woody Guthrie Festival. He recently published a collection of his poems entitled Love Between the Lines. He will be greatly missed by his many friends and colleagues but most profoundly by his wife of nearly 52 years, Dianne; sons, Jim and David and his wife, K.C.; grandchildren, Beatrice and Hollis; brother, Bill Broyles and his wife, Anita; nephew, Chip Broyles; nieces, Beth Corley and Amy Begley; grandnephews, Luke and Josh Corley and Bram Begley; grandniece, Addy Begley; mother-in-law, Juanita Fields; brother-in-law, Bill Fields; sister-in-law, Sadie Carter; nephew, John Carter; and grandnephew, Tristen Carter. A memorial service in celebration of his life will be held at 2 pm Saturday, August 25, at the First Unitarian Church, 600 NW 13th St., OKC. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Sickle Cell Cure Foundation (sicklecellcurefoundation.org) will be greatly appreciated.