Microbiology and Immunology

WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY Roux, Pierre-Paul-Émile

495

•

Moreover, Rous developed an ingenious method for obtain-

ing pure cultures of Kupffer cells by taking advantage of their

phagocytic ability; he injected iron particles in animals and

then used a magnet to separate these iron-laden liver cells

from suspensions.

In 1933, a Rockefeller colleague’s report stimulated

Rous to renew his work on cancer. Richard Shope discovered

a virus that caused warts on the skin of wild rabbits. Within a

year, Rous established that this papilloma had characteristics

of a true tumor. His work on mammalian cancer kept his viral

theory of cancer alive. However, another twenty years passed

before scientists identified viruses that cause human cancers

and learned that viruses act by invading genes of normal cells.

These findings finally advanced Rous’s 1910 discovery to a

dominant place in cancer research.

Meanwhile, Rous and his colleagues spent three

decades studying the Shope papilloma in an effort to under-

stand the role of viruses in causing cancer in mammals.

Careful observations, over long periods of time, of the chang-

ing shapes, colors, and sizes of cells revealed that normal cells

become malignant in progressive steps. Cell changes in

tumors were observed as always evolving in a single direction

toward malignancy.

The researchers demonstrated how viruses collaborate

with carcinogens such as tar, radiation, or chemicals to elicit

and enhance tumors. In a report co-authored by W. F.

Friedewald, Rous proposed a two-stage mechanism of car-

cinogenesis. He further explained that a virus can be induced

by carcinogens or it can hasten the growth and transform

benign tumors into cancerous ones. For tumors having no

apparent trace of virus, Rous cautiously postulated that these

spontaneous growths might contain a virus that persists in a

masked or latent state, causing no harm until its cellular envi-

ronment is disturbed.

Rous eventually ceased his research on this project due

to the technical complexities involved with pursuing the inter-

action of viral and environmental factors. He then analyzed

different types of cells and their nature in an attempt to under-

stand why tumors go from bad to worse.

Rous maintained a rigorous workday schedule at

Rockefeller. His meticulous editing and writing, both scien-

tific and literary, took place during several hours of solitude at

the beginning and end of each day. At midday, he spent two

intense hours discussing science with colleagues in the

Institute’s dining room. Rous then returned to work in his lab-

oratory on experiments that often lasted into the early evening.

Rous was appointed a full member of the Rockefeller

Institute in 1920 and member emeritus in 1945. Though offi-

cially retired, he remained active at his lab bench until the age

of ninety, adding sixty papers to the nearly three hundred he

published. He was elected to the National Academy of

Sciences in 1927, the American Philosophical Society in 1939,

and the Royal Society in 1940. In addition to the 1966 Nobel

Prize for Medicine, Rous received many honorary degrees and

awards for his work in viral oncology, including the 1956

Kovalenko Medal of the National Academy of Sciences, the

1958 Lasker Award of the American Public Health

Association, and the 1966 National Medal of Science.

As editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine,a

periodical renowned for its precise language and scientific

excellence, Rous dominated the recording of forty-eight years

of American medical research. He died of abdominal cancer in

New York City, just six weeks after he retired as editor.

See also Viral genetics; Viral vectors in gene therapy;

Virology; Virus replication; Viruses and responses to viral

infection

RRoux, Pierre-Paul-Émile OUX, PIERRE-PAUL-ÉMILE(1853-1933)

French physician and bacteriologist

Soon after becoming a doctor, Émile Roux began doing

research on bacterial diseases for Louis Pasteur. It has taken a

century, however, for Roux’s contribution to Pasteur’s work—

specifically his experiments utilizing dead bacteriato vacci-

nate against rabies—to be acknowledged. Roux is also

credited, along with Alexandre Yersin, with the discovery of

the diphtheriatoxin secreted by Corynebacterium diphtheriae

and immunizationagainst the disease in humans. Both col-

league and close friend to Pasteur, Roux eventually became

the director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

Roux began his study of medicine at the Clermont-

Ferrand Medical School in 1872. In 1874 Roux moved to Paris

where he continued his studies at a private clinic. In 1878 he

helped create lectures on fermentationfor Emile Duclaux at

the Sorbonne, Paris. Duclaux introduced Roux to Louis

Pasteur, who was then in need of a doctor to assist with his

research on bacterial diseases.

In 1879 Roux first began assisting Pasteur on his exper-

iments with chicken cholera. The cholera bacillus was grown

in pure cultureand then injected into chickens, which would

invariably die within 48 hours. However, one batch of culture

was left on the shelf too long and when injected into chickens,

failed to kill them. Later, these same chickens—in addition to

a new group of chickens—were injected with new cultures of

the cholera bacillus. The new group of chickens died while the

first group of chickens remained healthy. Thus began the stud-

ies of the attenuation of chicken cholera.

In the 1880’s Pasteur and Roux began research on rabid

animals in hopes of finding a vaccinefor rabies. Pasteur pro-

ceeded by inoculating dogs with an attenuated (weakened)

strain of the bacteria from the brain tissue of rabid animals.

Roux worked on a similar experiment utilizing dead rather

than weakened bacteria from the dried spinal cords of

infected rabbits.

On July 4, 1885, a 9-year-old boy named Joseph

Meister was attacked on his way to school and repeatedly bit-

ten by a rabid dog. A witness to the incident rescued Meister

by beating the dog away with an iron bar; the dog’s owner,

Theodore Vone, then shot the animal. Meister’s wounds were

cauterized with carbolic acid and he was taken to a local doc-

tor. This physician realized that Meister’s chance of survival

was minimal and suggested to Meister’s mother that she take

her son to Paris to see Louis Pasteur, who had successfully

vaccinated dogs against rabies. The vaccine had never been

womi_R 5/7/03 8:17 AM Page 495