Dr. Cooke Wright was a founding member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and a pioneer in the field of cancer research and treatment.

Dr. Wright, a Smith alumna, earned her M.D. from New York Medical College in 1945, and began working with her father, Dr. Louis T. Wright — himself one of the first black graduates of Harvard Medical School — at the Harlem Hospital Cancer Research Center, which he had founded.

Every time a cell divides, it first has to replicate (copy) its DNA. In many cases, cancer is caused by cells losing the regulation that tells them to stop replicating their DNA and/or to stop dividing. That’s why cancer cells grow out of control.

In 1951, the Wrights were the first to show that a drug called methotrexate could be used to treat solid tumors. Methotrexate blocks the breakdown of folic acid (also known as folate and vitamin B9) into a chemical called THF, which is used by our bodies to make thymine (the “T” in DNA). So if you can slow down the supply of THF, you can slow down DNA replication and cell division. (Side note: This is why its recommended that pregnant women take folate supplements — the cells in the developing embryo are dividing very quickly and its important that the mother not run out of THF to help support that process.)

This drug, methotrexate, is still a commonly used as part of many chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, and bladder cancer.

Dr. Wright’s second major contribution was the idea of (and methods for) growing patient tumor samples in the lab. Cancer is not a uniform disease — each type of cancer is very different from the others. We get around that to some extent by developing more mouse models: a lab trying to develop new treatments for breast cancer would do research with a mouse with breast cancer, not a mouse with leukemia. But each patient’s tumor is also unique and a drug that works super well for one person might do absolutely nothing for another person. You don’t want to treat someone with a drug that doesn’t work for them because these drugs all have unpleasant side effects and because if the drug doesn’t work, the cancer might actually get WORSE while you’re waiting to see an effect. Dr. Wright realized that you could avoid this problem by treating a piece of tumor in a dish in the lab first, where the effects would be obvious, fast, and easy to measure, and then use the drug that worked the best in the lab on the patient.

During her career, Dr. Wright was the director of cancer research for NYU Medical Center and then the head of chemotherapy at New York Medical College. She helped found the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and was appointed to the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke. She was also the first woman to be elected president of the New York Cancer Society. At the time of her retirement, in 1987, she had published over 75 scientific articles. In 2006, the American Association for Cancer Research honored her contribution to the field by creating the annual AACR Minorities in Cancer Research Jane Cooke Wright Lectureship.