Cause of death Stomach cancer Occupation oncologist
virologist Name Ludwik Gross | Nationality Polish, American Religion Jewish Books Oncogenic Viruses | |
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Born 11 September 1904 Krakow, Poland Died July 19, 1999, Krakow, Poland Education Jagiellonian University, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Awards Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize Known for Murine leukemia virus, Polyomaviridae | ||
Ludwik Gross (September 11, 1904 – July 19, 1999) was a Polish-American virologist who discovered two different tumor viruses, murine leukemia virus and mouse polyomavirus, capable of causing cancers in laboratory mice.
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Biography
He was born on September 11, 1904 in Krakow, Poland to a prominent Jewish family. He studied for a degree in medicine at the Jagiellonian University. He escaped from occupied Poland in 1940 soon after the 1939 Nazi invasion and travelled to the United States, ultimately serving in the US armed forces during World War II.
After the war, he joined other scientists (notably Rosalyn Yalow, recipient of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology) in the "Golden Age" of research at the Bronx Veterans Administration Medical Center, becoming director of the Cancer Research Division. One story claims that this appointment allowed him to move his research mice from the trunk of his car, where he had been carrying out studies, into a fully equipped laboratory.
He died at Montefiore Medical Center on July 19, 1999 of stomach cancer at age 94.
Research work
Gross was a major proponent of the possibility that some cancers can be caused by viruses and began a long search for viral causes of murine leukemia. In the course of these studies, he isolated the Gross murine leukemia virus strain as well as the first polyomavirus, so named for its proclivity to cause cancers in multiple tissue types. Gross murine leukemia virus is a retrovirus whose counterpart in humans is human T cell lymphotropic virus I (HTLV-I), while murine polyomavirus is closely related to the human Merkel cell polyomavirus that causes most forms of Merkel cell carcinoma. Thus, Gross identified two critical animal viruses that serve as models for viruses causing cancer in humans. His encyclopedic textbook Oncogenic Viruses is still considered a leading source book for early work in the discovery of viruses causing cancer.
Gross died of stomach cancer, a major cancer caused by infection with the Helicobacter pylori which he himself researched. A collection of his personal papers are held at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.