Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• DeVita, Jr, Vincent T
• Chu, Edward

Titel

A history of cancer chemotherapy

Ist Teil von

• Cancer research (Chicago, Ill.), 2008-11, Vol.68 (21), p.8643-8653

Ort / Verlag

United States

Erscheinungsjahr

2008

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The use of chemotherapy to treat cancer began at the start of the 20th century with attempts to narrow the universe of chemicals that might affect the disease by developing methods to screen chemicals using transplantable tumors in rodents. It was, however, four World War II-related programs, and the effects of drugs that evolved from them, that provided the impetus to establish in 1955 the national drug development effort known as the Cancer Chemotherapy National Service Center. The ability of combination chemotherapy to cure acute childhood leukemia and advanced Hodgkin's disease in the 1960s and early 1970s overcame the prevailing pessimism about the ability of drugs to cure advanced cancers, facilitated the study of adjuvant chemotherapy, and helped foster the national cancer program. Today, chemotherapy has changed as important molecular abnormalities are being used to screen for potential new drugs as well as for targeted treatments.