Jane Cooke Wright (also known as "Jane Jones" or "Mr. David Jones") (November 30, 1919 - February 19, 2013) is a pioneer and pioneering surgeon who notes for his contribution to chemotherapy. In particular, Wright is credited with developing techniques using human tissue culture rather than laboratory mice to test the potential drug effects on cancer cells. He also pioneered the use of methotrexate drugs to treat breast cancer and skin cancer (mycosis fungoids).
Video Jane C. Wright
Biography
Early life and education
Wright was born in Manhattan to Corinne Cooke, a public school teacher, and Louis T. Wright, a graduate of Meharry Medical College and one of the first African American graduates of Harvard Medical School. His father, Louis Tompkins Wright, came from a medical family. She is Dr.'s child. Ceah Ketcham Wright, a doctor who graduated from Bencake Medical College, and stepson William Fletcher Penn, the first African-American graduate from Yale Medical College. Uncle Wright, Harold Dadford West, also a doctor, finally president of Meharry Medical College. Wright's father continued to fight against racial injustice and declared the American Medical Association responsible for racial discrimination in the medical field. He publicly stated, "The American Medical Association has shown a similar interest in the health of the Negro as Hitler experienced in the health of the Jews." In becoming a doctor, Jane Wright and her sister Barbara Wright Pierce both follow in the footsteps of their father and grandfather, overcoming a successful gender and racial bias in the white male profession.
The Jane family has a history of strong academic achievements in medicine. The first medical member of the Wright family was Dr. Ceah Ketcham Wright. Ceah was first born a slave, and after the Civil War, Ceah earned his doctorate at Meharry Medical College. Steps of Jane's father, Dr. William Fletcher Penn was the first African American to graduate from Yale Medical College. Finally, Jane's dad, Dr. Louis T. Wright, whom he took his greatest inspiration, was one of the first black students to earn a M.D. from Harvard Medical School, the first African American doctor in a public hospital in New York City. After 30 years working at Harlem Hospital, he went on to establish and direct the Cancer Research Foundation.
Jane attended Smith College, originally wanted to pursue a degree in art, but her father advised her to change her studies into pre-medical studies. After his studies at the Smith college, Jane was awarded a full scholarship to study medicine at New York Medical College. He graduated as part of a three-year accelerated program above his class in 1945 with an honors award. After graduating from medical school, Dr. Wright obtained an apprenticeship at Bellevue Hospital during 1945 and 1946. In 1947, he married David D. Jones, Jr., a lawyer. In 1949, he completed his surgical residence at Harlem Hospital in 1948, where his father.
As a child, Wright attended Ethical Culture Fieldston School, then the school "Ethical Culture" and "Fieldston School", from which he graduated in 1938. He graduated with an art degree from Smith College in 1942 and later obtained a doctor's degree, graduating with honors degree in 1945 from New York Medical College.
Professional
After medical school, he conducted residency at Bellevue Hospital (1945-46) and Harlem Hospital (1947-48), completing his tenure at Harlem Hospital as head of the resident. In 1949 he joined his father in research at the Harlem Cancer Research Center, which he founded, succeeding him as director when he died in 1952. In 1955 he received a research appointment at New York University's Bellevue Medical Center, as Associate Professor of Surgical Research and Cancer Research Director.
In 1949, Dr. Wright joined his father at the Cancer Research Foundation at Harlem Hospital. During his time at the research institute, he and his father sparked interest in chemotherapy agents. They are interested in making chemotherapy more accessible to everyone. Chemotherapy in 1940 was a new development, so it was not a well-known or well-practiced source because it was still in the experimental stage of drug development. Chemotherapy is considered a "last resort" and the drugs available and doses are not very well defined. Both Jane and her father wanted to make chemotherapy a more accessible method of cancer treatment. They are the first group to report the use of nitrogen mustard agents and folic acid antagonists as a cancer treatment. Folic acid antagonists can block folic acid in the body, which the cell needs to produce certain types of amino acids. By inhibiting folic acid, cells can not create new strands of DNA/RNA or produce proteins to induce mitosis. Since cancer cells are very proliferative compared to other classes in the human body, it is very important to stop mitosis from occurring. The antagonists of folic acid tested may be the most important discoveries because antifolates are very powerful against a large number of solid tumors, including some types of leukemia, Hodgkin's disease, lymphosarcoma, melanoma, breast cancer, and prostate cancer. Methotrexate is still one of the major chemotherapy drugs used today to treat many cancers, and it has become the basis for all modern chemotherapy.
Wright's research involves studying the effects of various drugs on tumors, and he was the first to identify methotrexate, one of the basic chemotherapy drugs, as an effective tool against cancerous tumors. Wright's early work brought chemotherapy out of untested experimental hypothetical treatment, into proven proven field, effective cancer therapy - thus literally saving millions of lives. Wright and his father introduced the nitrogen mustard agent, similar to the mustard gas compound used in World War I, which successfully treated cancer cells of leukemia patients. Wright then pioneered combinatorial work in chemotherapy, focusing not only on administering some medications, but sequence and dose variations to improve chemotherapy effectiveness and minimize side effects. She successfully identified treatments for breast and skin cancers, developing a chemotherapy protocol that increases the life span of skin cancer patients by up to ten years. He also developed a non-surgical method, using a catheter system, to deliver potent drugs to tumors deep in the body such as the liver and spleen. He published over 100 papers on cancer chemotherapy during his career and served on the editorial board of the Journal of the National Medical Association.
During his career, Cooke also collaborated with cell biologist and physiologist Jewel Plummer Cobb, another African American female scientist.
In addition to research and clinical work, Wright is also professionally active. In 1964, she was the only female among seven doctors who helped found the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and in 1971, she was the first woman elected president of the New York Cancer Society. Wright was appointed the corresponding dean and head of the Department of Cancer Chemotherapy at New York Medical College in 1967, apparently the highest-ranking African-American doctor in a prominent medical college at the time, and certainly the highest black female doctor in America. He was appointed to the National Cancer Advisory Council (also known as the National Cancer Advisory Council) by US President Lyndon Johnson, serving from 1966 to 1970 and the Presidential Commission on Cardiovascular, Cancer and Stroke (1964-65). Wright is also internationally active, leading a delegation of oncologists to China and the Soviet Union, and countries in Africa and Eastern Europe. He worked in Ghana in 1957 and in Kenya in 1961, caring for cancer patients. From 1973 to 1984 he served as vice president of the African Research and Medical Foundation.
Wright is the recipient of many awards, including an honorary Doctor of Medical Sciences degree from the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania.
Wright retired in 1985 and was appointed professor emerit at New York Medical College in 1987. In describing his pioneering research in chemotherapy, he told reporter Fern Eckman, "There is a lot of fun in exploring the unknown.No sensation is greater than do experiments, change in such a way that you make a positive contribution. "
Personal biography
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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