World of Anatomy and Physiology on Rita Levi-Montalcini
Rita Levi-Montalcini is recognized for her pioneering research on nerve cell growth. During the 1950s she discovered a protein in the nervous system, which she named the nerve growth factor (NGF). Her subsequent collaboration with biochemist Stanley Cohen at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, led to the isolation of that substance. Later applications of their work have proven useful in the study of several disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, cancer, and birth defects. Levi-Montalcini's and Cohen's work was recognized in 1986 when they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. Levi-Montalcini became the fourth woman to receive the Nobel in that field.
Levi-Montalcini, the third of four children of Adamo Levi and Adele Montalcini, was born into an upper-middle-class Jewish family in Turin, Italy, in 1909. She grew up in a traditional family and was steered by her father to pursue an education at an all-girls' high school that prepared young women for marriage. She graduated from high school when she was eighteen, having demonstrated exceptional intellectual ability, but was unable to enter a university because of the limited education that had been offered to her. Levi-Montalcini was uncertain what she wanted to do with her life (though she was certain she did not want to marry and have children), and it wasn't until three years later, when her beloved governess was stricken with cancer, that she decided to become a doctor.
After having convinced her father she wanted to enter medical school, Levi-Montalcini passed the entrance exams with distinction. She enrolled in the Turin School of Medicine in 1930, where she studied under Dr. Giuseppe Levi, a well-known histologist and embryologist who introduced Levi-Montalcini to research on the nervous system. She graduated from medical school in 1936 and became Levi's research assistant. With the rise of Fascism in the late 1930s, Jews were restricted from academic positions as well as the medical profession, and Levi-Montalcini was forced to resign from her academic and clinical posts in 1938. The following year, she accepted a position at the Neurological Institute in Brussels, where she worked until the Nazi invasion in 1939 precipitated her return to Italy.
Upon returning to Italy, she took up residence in Turin with her family. Restrictions imposed upon Jews had increased during her absence, and Levi-Montalcini was forced to set up a private laboratory in her bedroom. Again working with Levi, who had also been banned from his academic post, Levi-Montalcini began researching the nervous system of chicken embryos. In a memoir published in Women Scientists: The Road to Liberation, Levi-Montalcini recalls, "Looking back to that period I wonder how I could have found so much interest in, and devoted myself with such enthusiasm to, the study of a small neuroembryological problem, when all the values I cherished were being crushed, and the triumphant advance of the Germans all over Europe seemed to herald the end of Western civilization. The answer may be found in the well-known refusal of human beings to accept reality at its face value, whether this be the fate of the individual, of a country, or of the human race." Her research at the time, in fact, laid the groundwork for her discovery of NGF.
By 1942, the Allied bombing of Turin forced Levi-Montalcini and her family to move to the countryside, where she continued experimentation on chicken embryos to study the mechanisms of nerve cell differentiation, or the specialization of nerve cells. Contrary to previous studies conducted by the respected neuroembryologist Viktor Hamburger, who theorized that nerve cells reached their destinations because they were directed by the organs to which they grew, Levi-Montalcini hypothesized that a specific nutrient was essential for nerve growth. When Nazi troops invaded northern Italy in 1943, Levi-Montalcini was again forced to relocate, this time to Florence, where she remained for the duration of the war under an assumed name. Following the liberation of Florence in 1944, Levi-Montalcini worked as a doctor in a refugee camp, and, when northern Italy was liberated the following year, she resumed her post as research assistant to Levi in Turin. Hamburger, who was interested in a paper Levi-Montalcini had published on her wartime experiments, contacted her in 1946, inviting her to fill a visiting research position at Washington University in St. Louis. This temporary position ultimately lasted over three decades.
Levi-Montalcini's early work at Washington University concerned further experimentation on the growth processes of chicken embryos in which she observed a migratory sequence of nerve cells. Her observations validated her theory on the existence of a "trophic factor," which provided the essential nutrients for nerve cell differentiation. In 1950 she began studying mouse tumors that had been grafted onto chicken embryos, and which Elmer Bueker had earlier demonstrated were capable of eliciting a proliferation of nerve cells. After repeating Bueker's results, Levi-Montalcini reached a different conclusion. Instead of maintaining that the nerve cells proliferated in response to the presence of the tumor, she deduced that the nerve cells grew out of the tumor and that, thus, the tumor released a substance that elicited the growth. Traveling to Rio de Janeiro in 1952, Levi-Montalcini further tested her hypothesis using tissue cell cultures. Her tissue culture experiments regarding the presence of a substance in the tumor proved highly successful. However, there remained the important step of isolating this substance, which she called "the nerve-growth promoting agent" and later labeled nerve growth factor. Upon returning to Washington University, Levi-Montalcini began working with American biochemist Stanley Cohen between 1953 and 1959. During that time, they extracted NGF from snake venom and the salivary glands of male mice. Through these experiments, Cohen was able to determine the chemical structure of NGF, as well as produce NGF antibodies. Levi-Montalcini maintained her interest in the research of NGF; and, when she returned to Italy in 1961, she established a laboratory at the Higher Institute of Health in Rome to perform joint NGF research with colleagues at Washington University.
By 1969 Levi-Montalcini established and served as director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Research Council in Rome. Working six months out of the year at the Institute of Cell Biology and the other six months at Washington University, Levi-Montalcini maintained labs in Rome and St. Louis until 1977, at which time she resumed full-time residence in Italy. During this time she received numerous awards for her work, including becoming the tenth woman to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1968. Despite her success, Levi-Montalcini was the only director of a laboratory conducting NGF research for many years. Later researchers, realizing the significance of understanding the growth of nerve fibers in treating degenerative diseases, have continued the work that Levi-Montalcini began in the late 1930s.
Levi-Montalcini remained active in the scientific community in her later years, upholding status as professor emeritus at Washington University from 1977 until her retirement in 1989, as well as contributing greatly to scientific studies and programs in her native country. After winning the Nobel Prize in 1986, she was appointed president of the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Association and also became the first woman to attain membership to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome. In 1987, she was awarded the National Medal of Science, the highest honor among American scientists.
Levi-Montalcini kept abreast with current scientific trends into her last years, conducting further research at the Institute of Cell Biology in Rome that focused on the importance of NGF in the immune and endocrine systems. Additionally, with her twin sister, who is an artist, Levi-Montalcini established educational youth programs that provide counseling and grants for teenagers interested in the arts or sciences. Recognized not only for her astute intuitive mind and her dedication to fully understanding the mechanisms of NGF, Levi-Montalcini, frequently described by her congenial manner and wit, influenced three generations of scientists during her own lifetime.
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