RARE “Philadelphia Chromosome" Peter Nowell Hand Signed 3X5 Card for Sale

RARE “Philadelphia Chromosome" Peter Nowell Hand Signed 3X5 Card For Sale

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

RARE “Philadelphia Chromosome" Peter Nowell Hand Signed 3X5 Card:
$489.99

Up for sale the "Philadelphia Chromosome" Peter Nowell Hand Signed 3X5 Card.

ES-4787

Peter

Carey Nowell (February 8, 1928

– December 26, 2016) was a cancer researcher and co-discoverer of the Philadelphia Chromosome. 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.

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. He

received a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from Wesleyan University in

Middletown, Connecticut, in 1948 and a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in

1952. He joined the Navy, and during his tour

he conducted research at the Naval

Radiological Defense Laboratory 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. 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' chromosomes 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 (1927-1993), a graduate student at

the Fox Chase Cancer Center in

Philadelphia. Analyzing the white blood cells of patients with this particular

form of leukemia, Hungerford consistently noticed that the Chromosome 22 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, 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 Jr., a geneticist at Fox Chase, made

further progress linking genetics and cancer. In 1998, Nowell, Rowley and

Knudson received Lasker

Awards for their combined work in this area. At present, drugs

have been developed that hold chronic myeloid leukemia in remission for years.

Nowell received his B.A.

from Wesleyan University in

1948 and his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in

1952. He spent two years in the US Navy 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 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. 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 and other targeted therapies possible. In the

1960s, he published that phytohemaglutinin was capable of triggering mitosis,

which allowed scientists to grow cells in culture for the study for cancer.