ABSTRACT
Rita Levi-Montalcini is famous for her discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF) in the 1950s, which is essential for the growth, development and survival of neurons – work that led to a share of the Nobel Prize with Stanley Cohen in 1986. Levi-Montalcini knew that she would have a better chance of identifying and isolating the growth factor if she could cultivate the growth of neural ganglia tissue in a dish rather than using the whole embryo. By Levi-Montalcini and her assistant Barbara Booker, showed that NGF was essential for the differentiation, growth and health of a wide variety of mammalian ganglia, which included human tissue. It proved beyond doubt that NGF was essential for the growth and functioning of the nervous system. NGF has a particularly important role to play in the brain where it has been implicated in neurodegenerative conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.
