JANET D. ROWLEY, M.D.
Blume-Riese Distinguished Service Professor
Department of Medicine
The University of Chicago
will speak on
"UNDISCOVERED GENETIC CHANGES IN ACUTE LEUKEMIA"
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
4:00 p.m.
Filene Auditorium
Dartmouth College
Pre-Seminar Reception 3:30 p.m. in the lobby outside Filene Auditorium.
Janet Davidson Rowley entered The University of Chicago on scholarship at the age of 15, completing her last two years of high school and her first two years of college in a special accelerated program. She went on to attend the medical school after completing her pre-med training in 1946, earning her M.D. degree in 1948. For the next 20 years she worked part-time while raising her family. When her youngest child was 12, she returned to full-time research at the University.
Dr. Rowley's interest in genetics grew from her work at the Dr Julian Levison Foundation, a clinic for children with developmental disabilities. In 1961 she investigated the pattern of DNA replication in normal and abnormal human chromosomes as part of a year-long NIH-sponsored sabbatical trip to Oxford. On returning to The University of Chicago, she studied the chromosomes of patients with leukemia and demonstrated that the abnormal chromosome implicated in some types of leukemia is, in some cases, also involved in a translocation, providing paradigm-setting evidence that cancer is a genetic disorder.
Dr. Rowley was awarded the Albert Lasker Clinical Medicine Research Prize for 1998, and in 1999 received the National Medal of Science, America's highest scientific honor. The citation reads, "for revolutionizing cancer research, diagnosis and treatment through her discovery of chromosomal translocations in cancer, and in her pioneering work on the relationship of prior treatment to recurring chromosome abnormalities, for epitomizing the 'bench to bedside' philosophy in her application of basic discoveries to clinical medicine, and for her leadership nationally and internationally in the oncology and biomedical communities."
This presentation is co-sponsored by the Molecular & Cellular Biology Training Grant and the Departments of Biochemistry and Genetics. For additional information, contact Dr. Rowley's host, Jennifer J. Loros, Professor of Biochemistry and of Genetics at 650-1154.