Michael L Conalty:DR MICHAEL L Conalty, who has died aged 88, was a former director of the Medical Research Council of Ireland Laboratories, Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, chairman of the Irish Cancer Society and a member of the team awarded the 1980 Unesco Science prize for the development of the anti-leprosy drug, B663 or clofazimine, which is still widely used today.
He was born in Mullingar, Co Westmeath, in 1920 and was the eldest of the two children of James Joseph Conalty and his wife Anne (née Geraghty).
His father was a postmaster and had served with the British army during the first World War. He died after being hit by a train in 1927. The family subsequently went to live on a relative's farm in Co Louth.
Conalty was educated by the Christian Brothers in Dundalk and at University College Dublin. He was conferred with MB BCh BAO in 1944, and with MD in 1955. A World Health Organisation (WHO) travelling fellowship in 1956 was followed by a Royal Irish Academy senior visiting fellowship in 1969.
Following spells as house physician and house surgeon in 1944, he was appointed as assistant in the Pathology Department at St Vincent's hospital Dublin in 1945. A grantee of the Medical Research Council of Ireland in 1946, he served as a research fellow of the council from 1947 to 1959. He was also tutor in pharmacology at UCD.
At the Medical Research Council he worked with colleagues carrying out research to find new anti-tuberculosis drugs.
He devised a screening method for the pre-clinical evaluation of anti-tuberculosis agents. This was highly successful and later led to identification of anti-leprosy drugs, since the organisms responsible for tuberculosis belong to the same group - the mycobacteria.
He developed an interest in the uptake and distribution of anti-mycobacterial drugs and wrote extensively on the role of nacrophages in mediating anti-bacterial and immuno-suppressive activity of chemotherapeutic agents.
When the Medical Research Council set up a special committee on cancer in 1965 he was appointed secretary and remained in that position until the establishment of the Health Research Board.
He set up a screening system for transplantable tumours, initially using Sarcoma 180, and later with a number of other tumours including the Ehrlich carcinoma and also lymphatic leukaemia, the Lewis lung carcinoma, the B16 melanoma and a number of other tumours.
His research interests led him to study phagocytosis in tumour-bearing animals and he continued to study this important problem. He was convinced of the importance of empirical screening in the design of anti-cancer agents.
He forged links with and collaborated with a large number of foreign institutions and built up a very helpful relationship with the National Cancer Institutes at Bethesda, Maryland.
WHO financed a three-year project in collaboration with Dr NE Morrison at the Tropical Medicine Center in Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. Other collaborators included Dr Charles C Shephard at the US Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, Dr JW McCall, Department of Veterinary Pathology and Parasitology, University of Georgia, and Dr Indira Nath, All-India Institute for Medical Research, New Delhi.
In 1980 Dr Conalty, together with Dr Seán Sullivan and Dr Dermot Twomey visited India under the aegis of the Department of Foreign Affairs and IDL Chemicals Ltd, Hyderabad, to advise on the manufacture of clofazimine on a non-profit basis.
As a result, the reduced cost made the drug more accessible to Indian leprosy patients, of whom there were four million at that time.
He was a member of many professional and related bodies, including the Association of Clinical Pathologists, American Society for Microbiology, Reticuloendothelial Society, Laboratory Animal Science Association, Research Defence Society, Irish Medical Association, Irish Medicines Board, council of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine (representing the Royal Irish Academy) and the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland.
In addition, he was a former president of the Irish Association for Cancer Research, a committee member of the British Association for Cancer Research, council member of the European Association for Cancer Research and he represented Ireland on the International Committee on Laboratory Animals.
He published many papers in the field of chemotherapy, antibacterial and anticancer, in Irish, British, American and French scientific publications.
His colleagues at the Medical Research Council remember him as an excellent and inspiring leader, unfailingly helpful to the workers in the laboratories and generous with his wide breadth of knowledge. He retired in 1985. A member of the Royal Dublin Society, he was a devotee of opera music and also enjoyed carpentry.
He married Mary Noël Connolly in 1949 who predeceased him in 1996; he is survived by his sister-in-law Sheena Scanlon.
• Michael Laurence Conalty: born January 23rd, 1920; died July 17th, 2008