Jane Cooke Wright (also known as Jane Jones), born November 20, 1919 in New York and died February 19, 2013 in Guttenberg, was a pioneer in cancer research renowned for her contributions to chemotherapy. He is credited with developing a process for using human cells rather than laboratory mice to test the effects of treatments on cancer cells. She also pioneered the use of methotrexate to treat breast cancer and skin cancer. On the occasion of the congress of l’American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), back on the journey of this exceptional woman who was one of the founders. The text was originally published in English on Medscape.com.
UNITED STATES – When the Dr Jane Cooke Wright entered the medical profession in 1945, the idea that toxic drugs could target tumors seemed outlandish to many physicians and patients. How could a poison be used as a weapon against another poison – a cancerous tumor – without risking making the situation worse? As for the idea of combining two chemicals…
Dr Jane Cooke Wright
Yet by the time Dr. Wright retired in 1987, the chemotherapy treatments she had helped develop were routinely saving lives, and she had played a key role in the development of oncology, a new specialty. medicine, and its then most powerful agent for fighting disease and death, chemotherapy.
Path to Excellence
In itself, the story of Jane Cooke Wright would have been extraordinary enough if it had resembled that of most of her colleagues, but this surgeon and researcher was truly a woman apart. African American at a time when medicine and science – like politics and law – were almost entirely reserved for white men, Jane Cooke Wright had determination in her blood. It is true that Jane Wright’s family has a strong history of academic achievement in medicine. His father, the Dr Louis T. Wrightfrom whom she drew much inspiration, was among the first black students to earn an MD from Harvard Medical School, and the first African-American doctor at a public hospital in New York.
“Being black was not in his concerns, not at all,” said his daughter Alison Jones, psychologist in East Lansing (Michigan), during an interview. “Wherever she was, she wanted to be the best, not the best black person in a given category. Besides, she got angry if someone said she was good as a black doctor. »
On her way to excellence, Ms Jones explained, her mother had set herself the goal of curing cancer.
A medical heritage marked by hard work and trauma
Arguably, Jane C. Wright and her father Louis Tompkins Wright formed the most accomplished father-daughter team in all of medicine.
His father, the son of a former slave turned doctor and stepson of the first African American to graduate from Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut), himself graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1915. He received the Purple Heart during World War I, then became the first black surgeon to join the staff of Harlem Hospital (see box) .
In 1948, Jane C. Wright joined her father at the Harlem Hospital Cancer Research Foundation. There, the duo explore the possibilities of fighting cancer with a chemical agent similar to nitrogen mustard, known since World War I to kill white blood cells. Ironically, Louis Wright himself suffered lifelong health problems from an attack with the poison gas phosgene during his wartime service.
“Remissions have been observed in patients with sarcoma, Hodgkin’s disease and chronic myeloid leukemia, mycosis fungoides and lymphoma”, reports a published article in the review Oncologist upon his death in 2013. “They also performed early research on the clinical efficacy and toxicity of folic acid antagonists, documenting responses in 93 patients with various forms of blood cancers and incurable solid tumors. . »
This research appears in a study that was authored by three Wrights – Louis T. Wright and his daughters Jane and Barbara, both doctors.
Louis T. Wright, a physician and advocate for civil rights and integration
Jane Wright’s father, who witnessed mob violence and the aftermath of a lynching in his youth, was a supporter of the Harlem Renaissance. , in the interwar period and a prominent advocate of civil rights and integration. He was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and was the second black member of the American College of Surgeons.
According to the book “Black Genius: Inspirational Portraits of African American Leaders” published in 2009, it is said that he successfully treated lymphogranulomatosis venereum, a rare but devastating disease, thanks to a new antibiotic developed by his former colleague , the doctor Yellapragada SubbaRow. Louis Wright even tried the drug on himself, “like many doctors of old,” according to another of his daughters, Barbara Wright Piercequoted in “Black Genius” and also a doctor.
Louis T. Wright died in 1952, just months after 1,000 people – including Eleanor Roosevelt — paid tribute to him at a dinner to inaugurate the library of the Harlem hospital that bears his name. He was 61 years old.
Scientific sense mixed with modesty and elegance
After her father’s death, Janet C. Wright became director of the hospital’s cancer foundation. From the 1950s to the 1970s, she “discovered a way to use extracts from a patient’s tumor, removed by surgery and cultured in the laboratory in a nutrient culture medium, as a ‘guinea pig for testing drugs'”, according to the book “Black Scientists” published in 1991. Previously, researchers had focused on mice as experimental objects.
This approach also allowed Jane Wright to determine whether specific drugs such as methotrexate, a folic acid antagonist, would help certain patients. “She sought to predict the activity of the efficacy of in vitro chemotherapies at a time when no one had good predictive tests,” wrote the Dr James F. Hollandthe late Mount Sinai School of Medicine oncologist, quoted in The Oncologist .
“His strict attention to detail and steadfast concern for his patients helped determine effective dosages and establish treatment guidelines,” reports the obituary.Oncologist. “She treated patients that other doctors had failed, and she was among the first small group of researchers to carefully test the effects of cancer drugs in a clinical trial. »
Dr. Wright has also focused on developing ways to deliver chemotherapy, such as using a catheter to reach hard-to-reach organs like the spleen.
In addition to her work, Jane Wright was distinguished by her appearance and elegance. The magazine Ebony named her in 1966 as one of the best-dressed women in America.
According to his daughter Alison Jones, Jane Wright had a sense of modesty – and self-mockery. “I know that I am a member of two minority groups,” she told the New York Post in 1967, “but I don’t see myself as such. Of course, a woman has to try twice as hard. But racial prejudice? I have met very few of them. I may have encountered one – and wasn’t smart enough to recognize it. »
Almost two decades later, in an article published in 1984 in the Journal of the National Medical Associationa society of African-American doctors, it spoke about the past, present and future of chemotherapy without even mentioning the important role it had played in its development.
‘Global pioneer in medicine’ co-founds ASCO – and more
In the 1960s, Wright joined the influential President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke and was named Associate Dean of New York Medical College, her alma mater, a first for a black woman in a major American medical school. More importantly, Ms. Wright is the only woman among the 7 doctors who founded the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago in 1964, of which she will be the first secretary-treasurer.
“Jane Wright saw oncology as an important discipline within medicine, with far-reaching implications for research and discovery,” said in an interview with the Dr Sandra M. Swainan oncologist at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, former president of ASCO and author of Wright’s obituary in The Oncologist and 2013 .
Internationally, “Jane Wright led delegations of oncologists to China and the Soviet Union, as well as to countries in Africa and Eastern Europe. She led medical teams providing medical and cancer care and training to health professionals in Ghana in 1957 and in Kenya in 1961. From 1973 to 1984, she was Vice President of the African Health Foundation. research and medicine,” said her friend and fellow oncologist the Dr Edith Mitchell in his eulogy.
Jane Wright also raised two daughters who both went into the medical field. Alison Jones, the psychologist, currently works in a prison, while Dr. Jane Jones has become a clinical psychiatrist. She is now retired and lives in Guttenberg, New Jersey.
Both have fond memories of their mother, who supported them and insisted on excellence. “There was no excuse for not getting where we wanted to go,” Jane Jones recalled in an interview.
Jane Wright died in 2013 at the age of 93. “Jane C. Wright truly made contributions that changed the practice of medicine,” noted her friend Mitchell, an oncologist and retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general who now teaches at the Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia. “A true pioneer. An involved mentor. A renowned researcher. A global teacher. A world pioneer in medicine. A talented researcher, a beloved sister, wife and mother, and a beautiful, kind and loving human being. »
The article was originally published on Medscape.fr under the title Overlooked: Black Woman Doctor’s Key Role in Oncology History . Translated and adapted by Stéphanie Lavaud.
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