LOS ANGELES, CA.- The 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded to E. Donnall Thomas sold Thursday night for $312,500 at Nate D. Sanders Auctions.

Thomas won the Nobel Prize for his use of bone marrow transplants to treat leukemia and other blood cancers. Thomas first published his theory on BMT treatments in ''The New England Journal of Medicine'' in 1957, and then worked methodically throughout the 1960s and 70s to turn the theory into a clinical treatment, despite it being dismissed at the time as implausible and experimental. In the latter half of the 20th century, the treatment slowly gained acceptance, with approximately 60,000 transplants now occurring each year, bringing the survival rate for some cancers from zero to near 90%. Bone marrow transplants are now considered one of the greatest success stories in cancer treatment.

Most of Thomas' career was spent at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, where its former president and director, Dr. Lawrence Corey, said of him, ''To the world, Don Thomas will forever be known as the father of bone marrow transplantation, but to his colleagues at Fred Hutch he will be remembered as a friend, colleague, mentor and pioneer. The work Don Thomas did to establish marrow transplantation as a successful treatment for leukemia and other otherwise fatal diseases of the blood is responsible for saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe.'' Thomas performed much of his research alongside his wife, Dottie Thomas, a hematology technician and administrator.

Thomas was born in Mart, Texas in 1920. After earning Bachelors and Master’s degrees from the University of Texas at Austin in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, he obtained an M.D. from Harvard Medical in 1946. In 1955, Thomas was appointed physician in chief at the Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, New York, where he began to study rodents that received lethal radiation doses. The mice were saved by an infusion of marrow cells. However, at the time, patients who underwent bone marrow transplants all died from infections or immune reactions that weren't tracked in the rodent experiments.

In 1963, Thomas moved his lab to the United States Public Health Service in Seattle. He co-founded the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in 1975 and was also a Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. He died in 2012 in Seattle.

The Nobel’s image and the engraving ''Sveriges Riksbank Till Alfred Nobels Minne 1968” are on one side. The medal’s reverse side features a relief of a woman representing the Genius of Medicine, holding a book in her lap, as she collects water to nourish a girl. Encircling the medal are the words ''INVENTAS VITAM JUVAT EXCOLUISSE PER ARTES,’’ which translates from Latin to ''The benefits of improved life through discovered arts'' Thomas' name and 1990 in Roman numerals are engraved on a plaque framed by the words ''REG UNIVERSITAS MED-CHIR CAROL,’’ representing the Karolinska Institute that awards the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In early October, the Nobel Prize was awarded in five categories fulfilling Sir Alfred Nobel's will of 1895 requesting that the prize be awarded to “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.”

Bidding on the Nobel Prize medal began at $250,000.