Margaret Kelly

Margaret Georgia Kelly (October 5, 1906 − May 5, 1968) was an American pharmacologist specialized in the pharmacology of drugs used in cancer chemotherapy, carcinogenesis, and chemical protection against radiation and alkylating agents. Kelly was a senior investigator in the National Cancer Institute's laboratory of chemical pharmacology.

Early life and education Margaret Georgia Kelly was born in 1906 in Minneapolis. She attended the University of Minnesota from 1923 to 1927. While working at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) she continued her studies at George Washington University. She received the B.S. degree in chemistry in 1941, the M.S. degree in biochemistry in 1945, and the Ph.D. in pharmacology in 1951. The thesis for her master's degree was titled Nutritional Requirements of Normal and Malignant Cells: Effect of Growth Fibroblasts on the Composition of the Culture Medium. Her doctoral dissertation in 1951 was titled Pharmacological Actions and Physiological Disposition of Podophyllotoxin and Picropodophyllin.

Career

Kelly worked for a group of pathologists in the Washington area, and later, for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Kelly joined the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1940 as a medical technician in the laboratory of pathology. She was a senior investigator in the laboratory of chemical pharmacology at the time of her death. Her studies with laboratory animals showed that sulfhydryl compounds may protect against toxicity from x-irradiation and alkylating agents by a distribution pattern which causes more of a protective compound to accumulate in the sensitive tissues than in the tumor. She also demonstrated that newborn mice are as sensitive to chemical carcinogens as they are to viral carcinogens.

Personal life Kelly was married to fellow researcher, Rodger W. O'Gara, a pathologist at NCI with whom she collaborated. She died of cancer on May 5, 1968 in the NIH Clinical Center.

Selected works