Dr Jane Wright
Dr Jane Wright, who has died aged 93, was an American oncologist and conducted pioneering research into chemotherapy drugs, transforming them into a key aspect of cancer treatment.
Jane Cooke Wright was born in New York City on November 30 1919, the eldest of two children. Her mother was a schoolteacher; her father, Louis Tompkins Wright, had been one of the first African-Americans to graduate cum laude from Harvard Medical School, and the first black doctor to work in a municipal New York hospital. By the time Jane was four, he had set up a nursing school at Harlem Hospital, admitting black students .
Jane was educated at Fieldston Upper School, and won a scholarship to study art at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She went on to the New York Medical College in 1942, where she graduated with honours before starting work as an intern at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
At the time of her residency in 1947-48, very little was known about the efficacy of chemotherapy. Louis Wright had just established the Cancer Research Foundation at Harlem Hospital, and Jane joined him there in 1949.
The pair began testing new chemicals on patients with leukaemia and lymphatic cancers, their inspiration coming from studying victims of mustard gas attacks from the Second World War — Louis Wright had himself suffered lung damage in such an attack. It was found that gas survivors had reduced white blood cell counts. In leukaemia, however, there is a proliferation of malignant white blood cells, and the Wrights thought some of the chemicals found in mustard gas might be used as effective treatment.
When her father died in 1952, Jane Wright became the foundation’s director, at the age of 33. Three years later she became director for cancer chemotherapy research at the New York University Medical Centre. For the next four decades she remained at the forefront of chemotherapy research, testing therapeutic drugs, comparing responses in patients to laboratory findings, and developing new ways to deliver chemotherapy.
It was a period that inevitably involved a great deal of trial and error. At the start there was only one drug, mechlorethamine, which had been shown to be effective in lymphoma patients. But Jane Wright and her colleagues analysed a wide range of chemicals for their effect on cancerous cells, and their successes included mithramyacin, used to treat brain tumours that could not be removed surgically. Jane Wright also experimented with injecting drugs directly into the blood vessels connected to a tumour, for a more targeted treatment.
In 1964 Wright was appointed to the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke, responsible for setting up regional cancer centres across the country. That same year, she co-founded the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) . She returned to New York Medical College in 1967 as associate dean, professor of surgery, and head of the cancer research laboratory. Her research and teaching work continued until her official retirement in 1987.
She married, in 1947, David Jones, who predeceased her. She is survived by her two daughters .
Dr Jane Wright, born November 30 1919, died February 19 2013
In 1964 Wright was appointed to the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke, responsible for setting up regional cancer centres across the country. That same year, she co-founded the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) . She returned to New York Medical College in 1967 as associate dean, professor of surgery, and head of the cancer research laboratory. Her research and teaching work continued until her official retirement in 1987.
She married, in 1947, David Jones, who predeceased her. She is survived by her two daughters .
Dr Jane Wright, born November 30 1919, died February 19 2013