Charles Brenton Huggins

Charles Brenton Huggins was born on September 22, 1901 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, American, is Physician & Surgeon. Charles Brenton Huggins was a Canadian-born American physician, surgeon and physiologist who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1966 for his discovery regarding use of hormones to regulate spread of certain types of cancer. Such findings of Huggins was the first of its kind in this field that showed chemicals can be applied to control the spreading of this fatal disease and this path-breaking discovery aided in initiating a new era of drug therapy that laid the foundation for advanced treatment of prostate and breast cancer. He conducted his research work on cancer, specializing in prostate cancer at the ‘University of Chicago’ where he remained director of the ‘Ben May Laboratory for Cancer Research’ for nearly two decades. He was a male urological and genital tract specialist and through his investigations he found that by applying doses of the female hormone estrogen, the actions of the male hormone in a patient can be restricted, which would impede the growth of prostate cancer. Through his investigations, he also displayed the dependency of breast cancers on particular hormones. He succeeded in regressing tumours of a few of his patients by removing the sources of estrogen that is the adrenal glands and the ovaries. Such research work of Huggins paved way for development of drugs that prevent estrogen production in body, thus aiding in the treatment of breast cancer. In 1966 he received the ‘Gairdner Foundation International Award’.
Charles Brenton Huggins is a member of Surgeons