Rosenberg, Barnett

AN AMERICAN CHEMIST, Barnett Rosenberg was the winner of the Charles F. Kettering Prize of the General Motors Cancer Foundation in 1984 for “the discovery of cisplatin and the significant role of platinum coordination complexes in the treatment of human cancer. Cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy has proven especially effective against testicular cancer, ovarian cancer and head and neck cancer.” The discovery of cisplatin also won Rosenberg the Harvey prize from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Barnett Rosenberg was born in 1926 and gained his doctorate from Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University, in 1956, with his thesis entitled Persistent Internal Polarization. In 1961, Rosenberg joined Michigan State University and taught there until his retirement in 1997. He has published many academic papers including one, coauthored with J. H. Burness, M. J. Bandurski, and L.

J. Passman, on the interaction of platinum-containing polycations and polyanions with biomacromolecules, published in the Journal of Clinical Hematology and Oncology in 1977.

During research in 1965, Rosenberg and his colleagues were able to prove that certain platinum-containing compounds inhibited cell division and thereby cured solid tumors. The discovery took place when Rosenberg was looking into the effects of an electric field on the growth of bacteria and noticed that the bacteria ceased to divide when they were placed within an electric field. Rosenberg performed this experiment many times and eventually discovered that this phenomenon only took place when he was using a platinum electrode. The next stage in this research was the development of a chemotherapy drug called cisplatin, which obtained approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1978. In 1979, Rosenberg was named as Michiganian of the Year, and 5 years later, was awarded the Charles F. Kettering Prize. In 1982, Rosenberg founded the Barros Institute in Holt, Michigan. He was also awarded the second Bennett J. Cohen Award in 1998.