Biographical Memoirs Volume 48 (1976) / Chapter Skim
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Francis Peyton Rous
Francis Peyton Rous
Pages 274-307
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From page 275... ...
After graduating in medicine, he went to the University of Michigan, where he began his research career in pathology, which he perfected during a year in Dresden. In 1909 he joined the Rockefeller Institute under Simon Flexner, to engage in cancer research, against the opinion of influential friends who thought it was a hopeless field.
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From page 276... ...
I, like most of my contemporaries, became acquainted with Peyton Rous's fundamental discovery in the early fifties, when Harry Rubin came to my lab to work with the Rous Sarcoma Virus. He started using a focus technique on the chorioallantoic membrane of the chicken embryo, which Rous had invented many years before.
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From page 277... ...
Again his interest was acute, and I had to embark on a detailed discussion of phage integration, immunity, and lysogenic conversion. Peyton Rous discovered the viral etiology of a chicken sarcoma in 1911 through his interest in tumor tr~n~nl~nt~hilirv to 1 , ~ - ~ YE new nosts oy a nitrate.
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From page 278... ...
However, these discoveries seem to have been convincing for Rous, who wrote, "The findings with the chicken tumors largely demolish the theoretical basis in which objections to an extrinsic cause for cancer have been built up" (1912~. In order to find more generally acceptable evidence, Peyton Rous attempted to extend his observations "especially through carefully devised experiments with the tumors of other species of animals" (1911~.
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From page 279... ...
This point was also developed to a much greater extent later on. As further evidence for a viral nature of the chicken tumors, the resistance of the host to the tumor cells could be separated
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From page 280... ...
Furthermore, in domestic rabbits the virus-induced papillomas often grew progressively, invading the neighboring tissues and producing metastases, and this malignant evolution could be enhanced by exposing the papillomas to various substances, such as Scarlet Red. These findings seem to have been for Rous the decisive argument for the validity of his conclusions concerning the chicken tumors, since in a mammal cancer could also be transmitted by a virus.
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From page 281... ...
He sought to possibly disprove the infectious nature of cancer by comparing the frequency of cancer induction by tar in the skin of two groups of mice with different exposure to- the environment: "The animals of one group have been placed under conditions which would facilitate the entrance into the body of extraneous living agents, whereas those of the others have been sedulously protected" (1932~. The results proved "that the mouse cancer cannot be caused by living entities reaching the body from the surrounding world during adult life" but "fail to exclude the possible activity of entities residing habitually in or upon the body" (1932~.
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From page 282... ...
Peyton Rous found no demonstrable antibodies in rabbits without papillomas or in those with tar papillomas or Brown-Pierce tumors: these findings "speak decisively against the possibility that these growths are caused by viruses antigenically related to the one causing papillomas. Yet this does not exclude a virus causation for them, since the sera of fowls with Chicken Tumor I and Fujinami Sarcoma respectively, though possessed of neutralizing power for the virus causing the growth carried by the host, have no cross-neutralizing effect whatsoever" (1936~.
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From page 283... ...
, and then, after World War II, V X 2 because during the war V2 "came to have another significance" (1952~. This line did not contain infectious papilloma virus, but for many serial transfers in rabbit it continued to elicit the production of virus-specific antibody.
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From page 284... ...
However, many observations also showed that the role of the virus and of the chemicals was different: "The generality of the carcinogens bring about tissue conditions out of which tumors may or may not arise for reasons still undetermined. They may' tee fitly called provocative carcinogens.
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From page 285... ...
He added, "A list of human tumors which have been traced to the action of provocative carcinogens is in no small degree a sociological document, reflecting as it does the ways of life, vocation, avocations, habits and environmental stresses of people and individuals" (1943~. The third suggestion was that viruses and chemicals in combination might have a continued role in spontaneous cancer: "The recent discovery that viruses of some sorts lie latent for long periods, causing disease only on special occasion, coupled with the realization that some tumors have viruses as their cause, has led to a supposition already mentioned that agents of this sort may reside in animal tissues, perhaps throughout the lifetime of the organism, doing no harm unless the cells with which they are associated undergo special pathological changes, when they undergo variation as a result of the new, abnormal milieu and render the cells neoplastic.
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From page 286... ...
For the latter neither time nor donors are available." Quite rapidly, at the beginning of the war, Peyton Rous and associates perfected a method for storing human red blood cells, using a weak gelatin solution to protect them during washing and sugars to preserve them. The procedure was used to establish the first blood bank
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From page 287... ...
In addition to his experimental work, Peyton Rous had another absorbing interest: the editorship of the Journal of Experimental Medicine. It is known that he dedicated to it an immense amount of time and energy.
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From page 288... ...
, lava-like flows can be seen on its surface, when the light is cut down, and at its edges fimbriated or 'petaloid' extrusions, at times appearing whip-like, which are in constant slow motion" (1934~. Comparing his work with the chicken viruses, which started with a cancer and led to a virus, and with the Shope virus, which started with a virus and led to a cancer: "The trails have met at the same look-out.
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From page 289... ...
and suggesting the nicest Ratskeller in Frankfurt, with the best food, wine, and atmosphere. Peyton Rous received many official honors in his life, including the highest.
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From page 290... ...
290 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS HONORS AND DISTINCTIONS Honorary degrees from the universities of Cambridge, Michigan, Yale, Birmingham, McGill, Chicago, and Zurich Member of the National Academy of Sciences Member of the American Philosophical Society Foreign Member of the Royal Society Member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences National Medal of Science Cleveland Medal of the American Cancer Society Gold headed cane of the Association of Pathologists and Bacteriolog~sts United Nations Prize Gold Medal of the Royal Society of Medicine Albert Lasker Award Landsteiner Award of the American Society of Blood Banks Distinguished Service Award of the American Cancer Society Kovalenko Award of the National Academy of Sciences Ehrlich Darmstaedter Prize Kober Medal of the Association of American Physicians Benter Medal and Award of the University of Texas Walker Prize of the Royal College of Surgeons John Scott Medal and Award of the City of Philadelphia Nobel Prize for Medicine (shared with Charles Huggins)
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From page 291... ...
= Cancer Research I
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From page 292... ...
Transplantable tumors of the fowl; a neglected material for cancer research.
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From page 293... ...
On the causation by filterable agents of three distinct chicken tumors.
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On immunity to transplantable chicken tumors.
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From page 295... ...
II. The production of a serum effective against the agent causing a chicken sarcoma.
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From page 296... ...
The experimental production of gall stones in dogs, in the absence of infection, stasis and gall bladder influence upon the bile.
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From page 297... ...
Med., 39:425-45. The relative reaction of living mammalian tissues.
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From page 298... ...
The relative reaction within living mammalian tissues.
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From page 299... ...
Outlying acidosis due to functional ischemia.
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From page 300... ...
The neoplastic traits of a mammalian growth due to a filterable virus the Shope rabbit papilloma. Science, 79: 437-38.
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From page 301... ...
Observations on the relation of the virus causing rabbit papillomas to the cancers deriving therefrom.
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The carginogenic effect of methylcholan threne and of tar on rabbit papillomas due to a virus. Science 94:495-96.
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:i. 1947 Recent advances in cancer research.
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From page 304... ...
Joint action of a chemical carcinogen and a neoplastic virus to induce cancer in rabbits. Results of exposing epidermal cells to a carcinogenic hydrocarbon at time of infection with the Shope papilloma virus.
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Are carcinogens responsible for the superimposed neoplastic changes occurring in mouse tumor cells? The effect of methylcholanthrene and urethane on pulmonary adenomas and of methylcholanthrene on mammary carcinomas.
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From page 306... ...
Further experiments on the cause of sequential neoplastic changes. The effects of 20-methylcholanthrene on transplanted epidermal mouse papillomas and the derivative carcinomas.
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