Peter Carey Nowell (February 8, 1928 – December 26, 2016) was a cancer researcher and co-discoverer of the

Philadelphia chromosome The Philadelphia chromosome or Philadelphia translocation (Ph) is a specific genetic abnormality in chromosome 22 of leukemia cancer cells (particularly chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cells). This chromosome is defective and unusually short becaus ...

. At the time of his death, he was the Gaylord P. and Mary Louise Harnwell Emeritus Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

Biography

Peter Carey Nowell was born in Philadelphia. His mother was a writer and a teacher, and his father was an electrical engineer for the

Bell Telephone Company The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Englan ...

. He received a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from

Wesleyan University Wesleyan University ( ) is a Private university, private liberal arts college, liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a Men's colleges in the United States, men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Epis ...

in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1948 and a medical degree from the

in 1952. He joined the

Navy A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

, and during his tour he conducted research at the

Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory The United States Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) was an early military lab created to study the effects of radiation and nuclear weapons. The facility was based at the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco, California. Hist ...

in San Francisco. He joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1956. At the time of his death he was chairman of the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at UP. In 1952 Nowell married Helen Walker Worst. They had five children. His wife died in 2004. Nowell died in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

Discovery of the Philadelphia chromosome

Nowell credits his ultimate discovery of the so-called Philadelphia chromosome to an accident he made while cleaning a research slide. While working in a laboratory at UP studying samples of chronic myeloid leukemia, he happened to wash his slides with tap water instead of a laboratory solution. When he then studied the slides under his microscope, he saw that the water had caused the cells'

chromosome A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...

s to expand. This was unusual, but since at that time chromosomes were not considered part of the cancer-causing puzzle, he could have disregarded the anomaly. Instead, he decided to investigate (he said later, "I didn’t know anything about chromosomes, but it seemed a shame to throw this away.") He partnered with

David Hungerford David A. Hungerford (1927–1993) was an American cancer researcher and co-discoverer of the Philadelphia chromosome. This discovery was the first association between a genetic abnormality and a type of cancer, and it changed the direction of cancer ...

(1927-1993), a graduate student at the

Fox Chase Cancer Center Fox Chase Cancer Center is a National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center research facility and hospital located in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. The main facilities of the center are loca ...

in Philadelphia. Analyzing the white blood cells of patients with this particular form of leukemia, Hungerford consistently noticed that the

Chromosome 22 Chromosome 22 is one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in human cell (biology), cells. Humans normally have two copies of chromosome 22 in each cell. Chromosome 22 is the second smallest human chromosome, spanning about 49 million DNA base pairs and ...

was noticeably short. The finding was a turning point. Until then, most scientists believed viruses to be the cause of cancer. This new avenue of research fueled decades of scientific research that produced monumental steps in the treatment of cancer. Gradually, technology improved enough to allow scientists to visualize the genetic material in greater detail.

Janet D. Rowley Janet Davison Rowley (April 5, 1925 – December 17, 2013) was an American human geneticist and the first scientist to identify a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukemia and other cancers, thus proving that cancer is a genetic disease. ...

, a University of Chicago researcher, determined the chromosome to result from a translocation, in which portions of two chromosomes exchange places, causing cells to turn malignant.

Alfred G. Knudson Alfred George Knudson, Jr. (August 9, 1922 – July 10, 2016) was an American physician and geneticist specializing in cancer genetics. Among his many contributions to the field was the formulation of the Knudson hypothesis in 1971, which exp ...

Jr., a geneticist at Fox Chase, made further progress linking genetics and cancer. In 1998, Nowell, Rowley and Knudson received

Lasker Awards The Lasker Awards have been awarded annually since 1945 to living persons who have made major contributions to medical science or who have performed public service on behalf of medicine. They are administered by the Lasker Foundation, which was f ...

for their combined work in this area. At present, drugs have been developed that hold chronic myeloid leukemia in remission for years.

University of Pennsylvania career

Nowell received his B.A. from

in 1948 and his M.D. from the

in 1952. He spent two years in the

US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...

studying radiation and bone marrow transplantation and then returned to UPenn where he joined the faculty in 1956. He served as chair of the department of pathology from 1967-1973, and as the first director of the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center, now known as the

Abramson Cancer Center The Ruth and Raymond Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine is a specialized medical facility located at 34th Street and Civic Center Boulevard, on the former site of the Philadelphia Civic Center, on the campus of the Hospital of the University ...

at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1960, Nowell and his graduate student David Hungerford discovered the Philadelphia chromosome, an abnormally small chromosome in the cancerous white blood cells of patients with

chronic myelogenous leukemia Chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), also known as chronic myeloid leukemia, is a cancer of the white blood cells. It is a form of leukemia characterized by the increased and unregulated growth of myeloid cells in the bone marrow and the accumulat ...

. This discovery was a critical step in showing that cancer has a genetic basis, contrary to a widespread belief at the time. This information made the development of

imatinib Imatinib, sold under the brand names Gleevec and Glivec (both marketed worldwide by Novartis) among others, is an oral chemotherapy medication used to treat cancer. Imatinib is a small molecule inhibitor targeting multiple receptor tyrosine kin ...

and other targeted therapies possible. In the 1960s, he published that phytohemagglutinin was capable of triggering mitosis, which allowed scientists to grow cells in culture for the study for cancer.

Awards

* 1976 Elected member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

* 1980 Simon M. Shubitz Cancer Prize and Lectureship * 1986 Rous-Whipple Award of the American Society for Investigative Pathology * 1987 de Villiers International Achievement Award of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society * 1991 Elected member of the

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, E ...

* 1993 Elected member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

* 1989

Charles S. Mott Prize The Charles S. Mott Prize was awarded annually by the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation as one of a trio of scientific prizes entirely devoted to cancer research, the other two being the Charles F. Kettering Prize and the Alfred P. Sloan, J ...

General Motors Cancer Research Foundation * 1997 Gold-Headed Cane Award of the American Society for Investigative Pathology * 1998 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research * 2009 Elected fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

* 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences * 2011 AACC-NACB award for outstanding contributions to clinical chemistry * 2013 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research * 2014 Elected fellow of the AACR Academy

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nowell, Peter 1928 births 2016 deaths American oncologists Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania alumni Members of the National Academy of Medicine Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award Fellows of the AACR Academy Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania faculty Members of the American Philosophical Society