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Article ID: CBB001210098

From Pathology to Chemistry and Back: James W. Cook and Early Chemical Carcinogenesis Research (2012)

Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Volume: 59, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 152-169
Publication date: 2012
Language: English

DOI: 10.1179/174582312X13345259996056

Publication Date: 2012
Edition Details: Part of a special issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

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Carcinogens Science and industry Research Cancer; tumors Chemistry Biochemistry 20th century, early Great Britain Cook, James Wilfred

During the 1920s, concerns over occupational cancers in the tar, coal-gas and synthetic dye industries stimulated investigations into the responsible carcinogenic agents. Chemical pathologist Ernest L. Kennaway and organic chemist James W. Cook at London's Cancer Hospital Research Institute were the first to identify pure carcinogenic coal-tar polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Cook, who joined Kennaway in 1929, synthesised and tested hundreds of compounds, seeking to identify the exact relationship between chemical constitution and cancer. This paper reviews Cook's research programme until the early 1940s, and the attempt of his collaborator, Cambridge biochemist Joseph Needham, to identify the biological basis of carcinogenesis. In this, they drew upon structural and functional analogies between recently discovered hormones and carcinogens. Cook established novel ways of studying chemical carcinogenesis, although conflicting empirical results and understandings of cancerous growth militated against the development of a coherent mechanistic theory.

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