Under Gordon Hamilton-Fairley and Sir Kenneth Calman, he trained in the United States, spending sabbaticals at the NCI, Bethesda, Paris, Sydney, Australia and Amsterdam. In 1975 McVie became the Foundation Senior Lecturer at the Cancer Research Campaign Oncology Unit (currently Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre) at the University of Glasgow. In 1970, McVie took an MRC research fellowship at Edinburg University, Department of Therapeutics, investigating Hodgkin lymphoma. McVie obtained his degrees in science and medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1969, and became a lecturer in Therapeutics and Materia Medica, University of Edinburgh. He also emphasised the importance of adjusting a patient's management according to their ethnicity. He contributed several substantial additions to the field of cancer care including establishing localised, more pin-point, administration of chemotherapy, and encouraging the use of chemotherapy for the treatment of lung cancer throughout the EU. He was a visiting professor, King's College London, Senior Clinical Research Consultant at the Italian Institute for Molecular Oncology (IFOM) Milan, and Non Executive Director at Ellipses Pharma Ltd, UK Chair of ORIL, Australia and Chair of the European Alliance for Personalised Medicine. In the UK, he served on the boards of cancer institutes including the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, the Institute for Cancer Research, and the Christie Hospital.

He served on several committees including the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the boards of the National Cancer Institutes of France, Italy and the Netherlands.

McVie was born in Glasgow, Scotland and died of non-Hodgkin lymphona and COVID-19 in Bristol, England. He wrote over 350 peer-reviewed articles, editorials and books.

John Gordon McVie FRCP FRCPE FRCPGlas FMedSci (13 January 1945 – 20 January 2021) was an international authority on the treatment and research of cancer. Cancer research, Clinical Trials, Personalised Care

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