The Woman Behind Chemotherapy

Over 54% of cancer patients are able to live their lives after using chemotherapy. A medicine that only recently was researched and able to save countless people.

Written by Kate Buckridge

Over 54% of cancer patients are able to live their lives after using chemotherapy. A medicine that only recently was researched and able to save countless people. Jane C. Wright dedicated her life to researching and learning as much as she possibly could about cancer and chemotherapy. Working with her father, she was able to make many multiple important discoveries throughout her lifetime.

Jane was born in 1919 and raised in New York City. She was the younger of two daughters that her parents, Louis Tompkins Wright and Corinne (Cooke) Wright. Her family has been fortunate enough to receive a good education, something that many black people were unable to do in the 1800s and early 1900s. Her Grandfather, Dr. Ceah Ketcham Wright was born into slavery but once free went to college and got his medical degree at Meharry Medical college. Her step grandfather, Dr. William Fletcher Penn, was the first African American to go to Yale Medical School. Her Father, Louis Tompkins Wright, went to Harvard medical school and that is where he got his M.D. As for Jane herself, she went to private school in New York. As for college went to Smith College in Massachusetts and later, in 1945 got her M.D. Degree for New York Medical School. 

Jane Cooke Wright

After getting her degree she worked at Bellevue Hospital for a year. She met her husband, David D. Jones Jr. who was an attorney and was very supportive of her career. They had two children Jane and Allison. She loved being a mother and worked hard for her children. In 1949 she went back to work. Her father founded the Cancer Research Center in Harlem Hospital and Jane went to work with him. On October 8, 1951, Louis Wright died. Jane took over as director of the research center and continued her research, now for her children, and her father. 

As for her research, Jane made numerous improvements to cancer treatments. First, Jane improved chemotherapy by using nitrogen and mustard agents to treat sarcoma leukemia and lymphoma. She also was the person that saw potential in using patient tumor biopsies for drug testing. This led her to find ways to get chemotherapy medicine to tumors that doctors in the past were unable to access without surgery. This is a huge improvement because first, the surgeries were expensive which made many people turn away from it. Secondly, it is much safer to get chemotherapy without invasive surgery. Without Jane it would have been impossible to get the medicine in an affordable, safe way. 

Jane was named The Director of Cancer Chemotherapy Research in The New York University Medical Center. This was a tremendous accomplishment since she was the first black person to get this title. Out of the seven founding members of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in 1964, she was the only woman and the only African American. She was appointed to the President's Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke by President Lyndon B. Johnson also in 1964. From 1966 to 1970, Dr. Wright was a member of the National Cancer Center Advisory Board. In July 1967, he was appointed as a surgical professor at New York Medical College. JAne Wright had the highest ranking as a black woman in the medical world and became the first female president of the New York Cancer Society in 1971.

Dr. Jane C. Wright in 1967.Credit.New York Medical College

Jane has gotten multiple awards for all of the dedication and oppression that she had to work through in order to do the work and research she loved. She died at the age of 94 in New Jersey but her accomplishments that she has made will forever change cancer research for the better. 

Sources

Black Past. “Louis T. Wright (1891-1952) •.” Black Past, 19 Jan. 2007, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/wright-louis-t-1891-1952/.

Rogers, Brittany. “Jane Cooke Wright (1919-2013) • BlackPast.” BlackPast, 14 Apr. 2009, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/wright-jane-cooke-1919/.