Rous was born in Baltimore on October 5, 1879. He took undergraduate and medical degrees at Johns Hopkins University, and he became head of the laboratory for cancer research at the University of Michigan.
In 1909, his most important series of experiments examined the transmission of spontaneous cancerous tumors in chickens.
Preparing a cell-free filtrate from a malignant sarcoma isolated from a chicken leg and injecting it into healthy hens, Rous discovered that the recipients developed precisely the same tumors as the donors.
This discovery was regarded with suspicion for many years although Rous and his co-workers were able to show the nature of the growth and the causal agent (caused the Rous sarcoma virus).
The hypothesis proposed by Rous was not immediately accepted by the scientific community for the symptoms observed by Rous in the chicken were seemingly quite different from those generally described in the cases of viral infections such as grippe or measles.
In 1933, after R. E Shope discovered a growth in rabbits that often progressed to cancer, Rous took up his studies again and demonstrated several ways in which carcinogenic chemicals and tumor-inducing-viruses act together to speed up tumor production.
He also discovered that carcinogenic action consists of two phases – initiation, which gives a cell malignant potential; and promotion, in which the potential is realized as an actively growing cancer.
In his later years Rous was awarded many honors. In 1966, 56 years after his proof of the viral transmission, Rous was awarded the Nobel Prize. He was 87 years old.
Biography of Francis Peyton Rous MD (1879 – 1970)
