| Administrative History | Doctors Louise Pearce and Wade Hampton Brown began studying susceptibility and resistance to infection at the Rockerfeller Institute, c 1923. They discovered they could transplant certain cancers from one rabbit to another. The Brown-Pearce tumour was the first known transplantable tumour, aiding research into malignant tumours in cancer laboratories around the world. By 1940, more than two dozen hereditary diseases and deformities were studied in the tumours of the research team's rabbits. After the death of Wade Hampton Brown in 1942, Dr. Pearce focused on writing up their research findings, until her retirement in 1951. After a short illness, she died at her home in New Jersey in 1959.
From c 1946, Stalker conducted a series of studies on the growth and behaviour of tumours, using implants of the Brown-Pearce carcinoma in animal subjects. His laboratory day books and research notes from this work have survived for the period c 1946 - c 1962, and a small number of publications resulting from the work are preserved in MS 3471/3/1. |