Huggins, Charles Brenton

▪ 1998

      Canadian-born American surgeon and medical researcher (b. Sept. 22, 1901, Halifax, N.S.—d. Jan. 12, 1997, Chicago, Ill.), specialized in the surgical and therapeutic treatment of cancer of the prostate and mammary glands and shared (with Peyton Rous) the 1966 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for discovering the influence that hormones have on the onset and growth of certain forms of human cancer. His work demonstrated that cancer cells are not necessarily autonomous and self-perpetuating and that some depend on chemical signals such as hormones to survive. This insight led to the development of hormone therapy as a treatment for endocrine-dependent tumours. Huggins graduated from Harvard Medical School (M.D., 1924) and began his career as a surgeon at the University of Michigan. In 1927 he joined the faculty of the University of Chicago, where he founded and served as director (1951-69) of the university's Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research. Although initially involved in urology research, in the early 1930s Huggins became intrigued by discoveries being made in the field of cancer research by the German biochemist Otto Warburg, who won a Nobel Prize in 1931. Through his own research, Huggins discovered that the growth of prostate cancer could be stemmed by lowering levels of androgens, the male sex hormones, either by removal of the testes or by administration of real or synthetic female sex hormones. In 1944, recognizing that the adrenal glands were compensating for the loss of androgens in some treated patients whose prostate cancer recurred, Huggins performed the first complete removal of the adrenal glands, although this was considered a radical treatment to be used only as a last resort. Huggins turned his attention to breast cancer in the 1950s and showed that removal of the ovaries and adrenal glands combined with cortisone-replacement therapy was beneficial to 30-40% of women who were treated. His work led to the development of a test to distinguish between two types of breast cancer—one that was hormone-dependent and the other not—that helped determine which patients would benefit from this treatment. Huggins became involved in the 1960s controversy over whether birth control pills stimulated the growth of cancer of the breast and reproductive organs, and he maintained that data collected from thousands of patients did not support this link. Huggins received a number of honours, including the Lasker Award for Clinical Research in 1963. He was also the author of several books, notably Experimental Leukemia and Mammary Cancer: Induction, Prevention, Cure (1979).

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