Born: 5 April 1925, United States
Died: 17 December 2013
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
“Janet Rowley’s work established that cancer is a genetic disease,” Mary-Claire King has said. “She demonstrated that mutations in critical genes lead to specific forms of leukemia and lymphoma, and that one can determine the form of cancer present in a patient directly from the genetic changes in the cancer. We are still working from her paradigm.”
Born in 1925, Rowley began attending the University of Chicago at 15, where she learned, among other things, “to stick to my convictions if I really thought that I was correct, even when others disagree.” It would prove to be an important skill—and not just because her medical school training was delayed nine months because the current class already had its maximum three women for the class of 65 students. Like King, Rowley faced intense skepticism when she published her findings in the 1970s, the results of a decade of studying “the seeming genetic chaos of leukemic cells for consistent chromosome abnormalities,” as one obituary phrased it. She had been able to connect specific translocations—when a chromosome breaks and part of it reattaches to a different chromosome—to acute myeloid leukemia and chronic myelogenous leukemia but had to fight for years to convince other researchers. “I became a kind of missionary,” she later recalled. “I got sort of amused tolerance at the beginning.”
But her work—both the research and the advocacy—paid off, not least in the development of Gleevec, a life-saving treatment that blocks the function of the abnormal protein produced by the genetic translocation, and the use of a vitamin A derivative to treat acute promyelocytic leukemia.
“Janet Rowley was a pioneer in what is now called ‘translational research,’ the direct application of laboratory studies to understanding and treating human disease,” said another researcher. “She laid the foundation for personalized cancer care and targeted therapy.”
By 1990, scientists had identified more than 70 translocations linked to different cancers. Rowley published more than 500 papers (the AML and CML papers were only number 17 and 18). Her accolades include the Lasker Award, the National Medal of Science and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as well as over a dozen honorary doctorates and memberships in prestigious societies. She also served on federal committees that helped guide medical research policy, standing next to President Barack Obama when he lifted the federal ban on funding for stem cell research in 2009.
Rowley herself advised others to “take risks”—“Do something different if it looks interesting… I didn’t do anything noteworthy until I was 50. Success often involves a great deal of luck. Some people don’t like to hear that because it means there are things out of their control. But that’s the way it is.”