Search Results - Pearce, Louise, 1886-

Louise Pearce

Louise Pearce (March 5, 1885 – August 10, 1959) was an American pathologist at the Rockefeller Institute who helped develop a treatment for African sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis). Sleeping sickness was a fatal epidemic which had devastated areas of Africa, killing two-thirds of the population of the Uganda protectorate between 1900 and 1906 alone. With chemists Walter Abraham Jacobs and Michael Heidelberger and pathologist Wade Hampton Brown, Pearce worked to develop and test arsenic-based drugs for its treatment. In 1920, Louise Pearce traveled to the Belgian Congo where she designed and carried out a drug testing protocol for human trials to establish tryparsamide's safety, effectiveness, and optimum dosage. Tryparsamide proved successful in combating the fatal epidemic, curing 80% of cases.

For her work on sleeping sickness, Pearce received the Order of the Crown of Belgium (1920 or 1921). In 1953, Belgium further honored her, appointing Pearce and her co-workers as Officers of the Royal Order of the Lion.

Pearce also successfully developed treatment protocols to apply tryparsamide to syphilis. She spent much of her career studying animal models of cancer. Provided by Wikipedia