Rous, (Francis) Peyton (1879-1970)

US pathologist who was awarded a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1966 for his discovery of tumour-inducing viruses (from his research on cancer in chickens).

Working at the Rockefeller Institute in New York, Rous first identified cancer-causing viruses. In 1909, a poultry farmer took a chicken that had a tumour to Rous, who then prepared a cell-free filtrate from the tumour and injected it into normal chickens. He discovered that the normal chickens developed highly malignant tumours. Rous also isolated the tumour-causing agent in the filtrate: a virus now known as the Rous sarcoma virus or avian sarcoma virus. This virus subsequently has been shown to transform some cells into cancerlike cells using a protein produced by an oncogene called the src gene.