1 Rita Levi-Montalcini Learns How Nerves Grow Nothing could keep Rita Levi Montalcini from doing science Not even World War II She was born in Turin Italy on April 22 1909 In 4 1936 she graduated from medical school By that time life in Europe was difficult for some people Especially for Jews The Levi Montalcini family was Jewish But hardship didn’t stop her She built laboratories in her home Even when Italy was being bombed she kept doing research on nerve cells Nerves are long fibers that run through the whole body They send signals back to the brain These signals tell the brain if something is hot or cold soft or hard Nerves also sense pain World War II ended in 1945 After the war Levi-Montalcini continued her research In 1947 she was invited to work at Washington University in St Louis Missouri She studied there and did nerve growth research for 30 years Not much was known about how nerves grow Levi-Montalcini’s
big breakthrough came when she attached a tumor to a chicken embryo She was working with another researcher named Stanley Cohen Together they determined that a protein from the tumor made nerves grow They had discovered nerve growth factor NGF Levi-Montalcini and Cohen won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine Their discovery has helped doctors understand and treat diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer In 1987 Levi-Montalcini won the National Medal of Science This is the United States highest scientific honor In 2009 Levi-Montalcini was the first Nobel laureate to reach the age of 100 She lived to be 103 268 Miles per hour 431 3 km h that signals move along nerves Rita Levi-Montalcini came to the United States in 1947 Her research led to the discovery of nerve growth factor She won a Nobel Prize in 1986 5
2 6 George Clowes Advances Cancer Treatment George Henry Alexander Clowes was born in England in 1877 He went to school in England and Germany But his real work began after he immigrated to America In 1901 he started work at the Institute for the Study of Malignant Diseases These diseases can move from one part of the body to another The most destructive one is cancer And cancer is what Clowes wanted to defeat In 1907 he and a group of doctors and scientists cofounded the American Association for Cancer Research AACR In the early 1900s cancer was a mystery Doctors had known about cancer for more than 5,000 years But they didn’t know how to treat the disease Cancer comes in hundreds of different types Each type needs a specific treatment Researchers had started experimenting with chemicals to
29 Clowes’s age when he cofounded the American Association for Cancer Research George Clowes immigrated to the United States in 1901 He worked on cancer which didn’t have a good treatment He developed a line of tumors that could be tested for treatments treat cancer This became known as chemotherapy However there were many different chemicals to test Researchers needed a better way to test treatments Clowes developed a transplantable line of tumors The tumors were all identical Being identical is important for an experiment Scientists know that one part of the experiment will always be the same Researchers could take Clowes’s tumors and test a bunch of different drugs Since the tumors were all alike researchers could tell if a drug was effective Clowes changed the way we look for treatments 7
