In 1948 it was discovered in Hamburger's laboratory that a variety of mouse tumour spurred nerve growth when implanted into chick embryos. Levi-Montalcini and Hamburger traced the effect to a substance in the tumour that they named nerve-growth factor (NGF). Levi-Montalcini showed that the tumour caused similar cell growth in a nerve-tissue culture kept alive in the laboratory, and Cohen, who by then had joined her at Washington University, was able to isolate the nerve-growth factor from the tumour. NGF was the first of many cell-growth factors to be found in the bodies of animals. It plays an important role in the growth of nerve cells and fibres in the peripheral nervous system.
Levi-Montalcini remained active in the field, working at Washington
University until 1961 and afterward at the Institute of Cell Biology
in Rome. An autobiographical work, In Praise of Imperfection, was published
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