Stanley Cohen

Biochemist

  • Born: November 17, 1922
  • Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
  • Died: February 5, 2020

Biochemist

Cohen, with Rita Levi-Montalcini, discovered, isolated, and characterized nerve growth factor. His research led to a better understanding of how wounds heal and of how to treat many serious ailments, such as cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and cardiovascular disease.

Areas of achievement: Medicine; science and technology

Early Life

Stanley Cohen was born on November 17, 1922, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants—his father, Louis, was a tailor, and his mother, Fannie, a homemaker. As a child, Cohen suffered from polio, which left him with a permanent limp. Cohen describes himself in these years as being extremely interested in how things worked—from the interior workings of a telephone to the gears on his bicycle. While his parents had a high regard for education, money was tight, and all four Cohen children attended the local public school, James Madison High School. His grades were good enough to earn his entrance to Brooklyn College, a city school that charged no tuition fees. Following his graduation in 1943 with a double major in chemistry and biology, Cohen worked in a milk-processing plant doing bacteriology work. At this point, his ambition was to become a laboratory technician, but one of his former professors at Brooklyn College offered him a scholarship in biology to Oberlin College in Ohio. Because of his keen interest in the subject, Cohen enthusiastically accepted the opportunity.

Cohen graduated from Oberlin with a master’s degree in zoology in 1945. He was then awarded a PhD fellowship in biochemistry at the University of Michigan. His thesis was on earthworm metabolism. While his days were spent working in the laboratory, his nights were often spent collecting thousands of earthworms from the university grounds. Upon completion of his PhD in 1948 he accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado. In 1952, Cohen decided to study the emerging technique of using radioisotopes in metabolic studies, and he obtained an American Cancer Society Fellowship to work at Washington University in the radiology department. A year later he moved to the zoology department, where he embarked on a lifelong study of growth factors, for which he and Rita Levi-Montalcini were later to share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986.

Life’s Work

Cohen joined the laboratory of Viktor Hamburger and Levi-Montalcini at Washington University in 1957. Hamburger and Levi-Montalcini were both Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who had built a vibrant research laboratory investigating why nerves in chick embryo eggs grew when implanted with a mouse tumor. They recruited Cohen, a biochemist, to identify the active substance. He isolated the substance, nerve growth factor (NGF), and then created antibodies that blocked the growth factor’s activity.

By this time, Cohen had a young family to support, and in 1959 he accepted his first teaching position as assistant professor of biochemistry at Vanderbilt University. There, he continued to study growth factors, focusing on epidermal growth factor (EGF), which he discovered, isolated, purified, and sequenced. He also identified the receptor for EGF and discovered its mechanism of action. This led to a new understanding of the mechanisms whereby a cell responds to signals from its surroundings.

In 1976, Cohen was appointed American Cancer Society Research Professor at Vanderbilt. Together with Levi-Montalcini, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986, for their discovery of growth factors. He was also named Distinguished Professor at Vanderbilt in that same year. Until his retirement in 2000 he was a familiar, unassuming figure in the research halls of Vanderbilt, usually seen smoking his pipe. Upon his retirement he became Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Vanderbilt. Over the course of his career he received many other honors and awards, including the Vanderbilt University Earl Sutherland Prize for Achievement in Research in 1977, the National Medal of Science in 1986, and the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 1986. Cohen was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1980 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984. He was recognized with induction into the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Hall of Honor in 2007.

Significance

The discovery of growth factors had a major impact on understanding how cell growth in the body is stimulated in normal and abnormal circumstances. This had enormous implications for cancer therapy and led directly to the development of targeted anticancer drugs such as Herceptin (trastuzumab) and Gleevec (imatinib mesylate). EGF is also currently used to treat corneal ulcers and in burn healing. Growth factors may also hold important clues to a variety of other diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Applications of growth factors in the areas of aging and regenerative medicine, cardiovascular biology, cancer, and metabolic disorders have also been actively pursued.

Bibliography

Cohen, Stanley. "Origins of Growth Factors: NGF and EGF." Journal of Biological Chemistry 283, no. 49 (2008): 33793-33797. Print.

Cohen, Stanley. "Stanley Cohen—Autobiography." The Nobel Prizes 1986. Stockholm: Nobel Foundation, 1987. Print.

Kresge, N., R. D. Simoni, and R. Hill. "Precocious Newborn Mice and Epidermal Growth Factor: The Work of Stanley Cohen." Journal of Biological Chemistry 281, no. 10 (2006): e10-e11. Print.

Snyder, Bill. "Stanley Cohen's Nobel Prize: 25 Years of Progress." ResearchNews@Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt University, 9 Dec. 2011. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

"Stanley Cohen." Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, 2016. Web. 25 Apr. 2016.

"Stanley Cohen—Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media, 2014. Web. 25 Apr 2016.