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Johannes Andreas Grib Fibiger (April 23, 1867 Silkeborg – January 30, 1928 Copenhagen) was a Danish scientist, physician, and professor of pathological anatomy who won the 1926 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Fibiger had claimed to find an organism he called Spiroptera carcinoma that caused cancer in mice and rats. He received a Nobel prize for this discovery. Later, it was shown that this specific organism was not the primary cause of the tumors. Moreover, Katsusaburo Yamagiwa, only two years later in 1915 successfully induced squamous cell carcinoma by painting crude coal tar on the inner surface of rabbits' ears. Yamagiwa's work has become the primary basis for this line of research. Because of this, some consider Fibiger's Nobel Prize to be undeserved particularly because Yamagiwa did not receive the prize. But others credit Fibiger with showing that external stimuli can induce cancer and proving the correlation by experimental method. Encyclopædia Britannica's guide to Nobel Prizes in cancer research mentions Yamagiwa's work as a milestone without mentioning Fibiger.


Research

While studying tuberculosis in lab rats, Fibiger found tumors in some of his rats. He discovered that these tumors were associated with parasitic nematode worms that had been living in some cockroaches that the rats had eaten. He thought that these organisms may have been the cause of the cancer. In fact, the rats had been suffering from a vitamin A deficiency and this was the main cause of the tumors. The parasites had merely caused the tissue irritation that drove the damaged cells into cancer; any tissue irritation could have induced the tumors.[]

Although the specific link between the parasites and cancer was later known to be relatively unimportant, it was discovered later that tissue damage was a cause of cancer. This was an important advance in cancer research. Other parasites (such as Schistosoma haematobium and Clonorchis sinensis) are now known to cause cancer in humans.

One of his experiments from 1898 is by some regarded as the first controlled clinical trial.


Biography

Fibiger became a medical doctor in 1890 and studied under Robert Koch and Emil Adolf von Behring in Berlin. He received his research doctorate from the University of Copenhagen in 1895 and became a professor of Pathological Anatomy and Director of the Institute of Anatomic Pathology (1900) at the same University.