Cancer: A Brief History

Question 1

what was the 1st recording of external environmental factors affecting health?

Answer 1

Surgeon Percivall Pott in the 1770s reported that boys developed an abnormally high rate of scrotal cancer

Question 2

what are the 4 humors?

Answer 2

1. blood
2. yellow bile
3. black bile
4. phlegm

Question 3

In the 1880s and 1890s ______ ______ developed the…

Answer 3

Stewart Halstead

first radical mastectomy

Question 4

what was initially inspired by war? why?

Answer 4

chemotherapy

• exposure to mustard gas during WWII was found to wipe out white blood cells (ex: leukemias w/ a high white blood cell count)

Question 5

why was mustard gas significant to chemotherapy?

Answer 5

it lead to the production of analogs

Question 6

what was the first successful cell culture?

Answer 6

Henrietta Lacks (HeLa cells)

Question 7

why did the HeLa cells happen to survive causing a successful cell culture?

Answer 7

b/c it was a very nasty infection that had been caused by 3 different types of HPV. viruses

Question 8

who were the scientists responsible for the discovery of HeLa cells?

Answer 8

Margaret Gey and Lab Tech

Question 9

the legacy of HeLa includes…

Answer 9

-the vaccine for poliovirus
-created a technique to form new cell lines (cloning & IVF)
- enabled several types of genetic diagnoses with the discovery of our 46 chromosomes
- discovery of telamerase

Question 10

describe the function of telomerase

Answer 10

enzyme that repairs cancer cells DNA allowing the cells to survive where normal cells would’ve died

(causes chromosomes to never shorten)

Question 11

list the 4 applications of cell culture..

Answer 11

1. observe the normal physiology of cells
2. study the effects of drugs/chemicals
3. potential of generating artificial tissue
4. generating biological elements from large scale culture (generating new organs)