Dr. Jane Cooke Wright: A Key Figure in Oncology History and an ASCO Founder

When Jane Cooke Wright entered medical practice professionally in 1945, most doctors and patients considered the idea that toxic drugs could target tumors absurd. How could one poison be turned into a weapon against another poison – a cancerous tumor – without causing more damage? What about combining two or more chemicals?

By the time Wright retired in 1987, chemotherapy, which she had helped develop, was continuing to save lives. Indeed, Wright played critical roles in the development of oncology as a new medical specialty and of the most powerful chemotherapy drug in the fight against disease and death.

Wright’s story would not be extraordinary enough if it resembled that of most of her colleagues; we could say her work separated surgery from drug development research. An African American woman at a time when medicine and science – like politics and law – were almost entirely occupied by white men, Wright had perseverance in her veins. Her father, who had been honored by dignitaries including the First Lady, had always remained resilient despite facing terrible racism. She carried on his determination and continued her own personal battle.

She balanced elegance and beauty, scientific insight, and fierce determination so that she would be remembered for nothing other than her accomplishments.

Her daughter Alison Jones, a psychologist in East Lansing, said in an interview about her mother, “She did not focus on racism, ever”. “Wherever she was, she always wanted to be the best, not the best Black woman. It was not about how she fit into a category, and she would be upset when someone referred to her as a Black physician.” Jones says that, in striving to be the best, her mother set herself the goal of curing cancer.

A Medical Legacy Ignited by Adversity and Trauma

Jane C. Wright and her father, Louis Tompkins Wright, may be the most accomplished father-daughter team in all of medicine.

The elder Wright, the son of an enslaved man, became the first African American to graduate from Yale University. Graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1915, he earned a Purple Heart for his service in the First World War and later began working at Harlem Hospital as its first Black surgeon.

Having faced mobbing and lynching as a young man, Wright became a supporter of the Harlem Renaissance and a prominent advocate for civil rights and integration. He served as chairman of the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and was one of only two Black members of the American College of Surgeons.

According to the book published in 2009, “Black Genius: Inspirational Portraits of African American Leaders”, he successfully treated the rare but destructive sexually transmitted disease lymphogranuloma venereum with a new antibiotic developed by his colleague Yellapragada SubbaRow. In Black Genius, his late daughter Babara Wright Pierce, also a physician, said that her father had even tested the drug on himself, “as many doctors did in the old days”.

In 1948, Jane C. Wright joined her father at Harlem Hospital’s Cancer Research Foundation. There, the two explored the use of a nitrogen-mustard-like chemical, known since the First World War to kill white blood cells, to fight cancer. Ironically, Louis Wright had lifelong health problems after exposure to the poisonous gas phosgene during his wartime service.

Their work reported tumor shrinkage in patients with sarcoma, chronic myelocytic leukemia, and Hodgkin lymphoma. They also performed some of the first studies of the clinical efficacy and toxicities of folic acid antagonists, documenting responses in 93 patients with various forms of blood cancers and solid-organ tumors considered incurable at the time.

This research was presented in a study written by three Wrights – Louis T. Wright and his two daughters, Jane and Barbara.

“The elder Wright died in 1952 at age 61, only a few months after the Harlem Hospital library was named for him and a dinner at which 1000 people, including Elanor Roosevelt, honored him.

Scientific Insight Blended with Humility and Grace

After her father’s death, Janet C. Wright became head of the hospital’s cancer foundation. According to the book “Black Scientists,” published in 1991, from the 1950s to the 1970s she “found ways to surgically remove pieces of a patient’s own tumor, grow them in a nutrient culture in the laboratory, and use them as test subjects for drugs.” Previously, researchers had focused on mice as test subjects.

This approach also enabled Wright to determine whether specific drugs, such as the folic acid antagonist metotreksat, could help cancer patients with particular diagnoses. James F. Holland of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, quoting Wright’s 2013 Oncology obituary, said, “She was investigating activity predictions for in vitro chemotherapeutic efficacy when no one yet had good predictive tests.”

The Oncology obituary stated, “Her close attention to detail and concern for her patients helped her establish effective dose levels and create treatment guidance. She treated patients on whom other physicians had given up and was among the first small group of researchers carefully testing the effects of anticancer drugs in a clinical trial setting.”

According to “Black Scientist,” Wright also focused on developing a way to deliver chemotherapy into tissues using a type of catheter to reach organs such as the spleen that are difficult to access without surgery.

In addition to her work, Wright’s appearance distinguished her. According to “Black Genius,” a columnist described her as one of the most beautiful Black women in America, and in 1966 Ebony Magazine honored her as one of the best-dressed women in America. It featured a photograph of her in a striking ivory and yellow brocade dress and the wording “in private life, Mr. David J. Jones” was noted. (In 1946, she married a graduate of Harvard University Law School.)

Despite her accomplishments, Wright was modest, according to her daughter Alison Jones. She even downplayed her own intellectual abilities in a newspaper interview. Speaking to The New York Post in 1967, Wright said, “I know I am a member of two small groups, but I do not think of myself that way. Of course, a woman has to work twice as hard. But racial prejudice? I have encountered very little of it. Perhaps I have encountered it, but I am not smart enough to recognize it.”

Sharp-eyed readers might have seen her humility nearly 20 years later. In a 1984 article for the Journal of the National Medical Association of African American physicians, she wrote about the past, present, and future of chemotherapy without mentioning her own prominent role in its development.

A Pioneering Physician Worldwide – One of the 7 Doctors Who Founded ASCO

In the 1960s, Wright joined the President’s Commission on Heart Disease, Cancer, and Stroke and was appointed associate dean at the prominent New York Medical School, a first for a Black woman.

More importantly, Wright was the only woman among the seven physicians who founded the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago in 1964. She served as ASCO’s first secretary-treasurer and, when she died 9 years ago, was honored as its longest-surviving founder.

NOTE: ASCO, which holds a scientific congress in the first week of June each year, is the leading professional oncology organization worldwide.

Oncologist Sandra M. Swain of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, a former ASCO president and author of Wright’s 2013 Oncology obituary, said of Wright, “Jane Wright had the vision to see oncology as an important and distinct discipline in medicine with wide-ranging implications for research and discovery. As a woman and an African American, it is truly remarkable that she was at the founding table in forming such an important group.”

Oncologist Edith Mitchell also said of her friend, “Wright pioneered sending oncologists to China and the Soviet Union and to countries in Africa and Eastern Europe. She also led medical teams providing medical and cancer care and training to nurses and physicians in Ghana in 1957 and Kenya in 1961. From 1973 to 1984, she served as vice president of the African Research and Medical Foundation.”

Wrigth had two daughters. In a 1968 article discussing her career and family, she said neither daughter was interested in a medical career. But their views changed over time – just as Wright’s had. As an undergraduate at Smith College, Wright had majored in art, swum on the college team, and had a particular aptitude for studying German before switching to premedical studies.

Like their mother, Wright’s daughters changed direction and ultimately became the fourth generation of the family to enter medicine. Alison Jones, a psychologist, currently works in a prison. Jane Jones became a clinical psychologist and is now retired, living in Guttenberg, N.J.

Both remember their mother as a supportive force who insisted on excellence. Jane Jones said of her mother in an interview, “There can be no excuse for not getting where you want to go.”

At the same time, Wright remained aware of society’s harsh limits. Alison Jones said of her mother, “She told me I had to become a doctor or lawyer, because that is how you have to survive if you are Black in America”.

Wright died in 2013 at age 93.

Mitchell, an oncologist and retired brigadier general in the US Air Force who now teaches at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, said of her friend, “Jane C. Wright made contributions that truly changed medical practice. A real pioneer. A caring mentor. A distinguished researcher, a universal teacher. A universal medical leader. A talented researcher, a loving sister, wife, and mother. A beautiful, kind, and loving person.”