CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, Vol 23, 202-207, Copyright
© 1973 by American Cancer Society
The Basis for Progress in Chemotherapy
C. Gordon Zubrod M.D.1
1 Director of the Division of Cancer Treatment, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
In the first 10 years of cancer chemotherapy, a few drugs were developed that could temporarily halt the progression of fatal cancer. In the next 10 years, the nation's scientists and physicians learned how to search for better drugs in a systematic way and how to use these drugs to rid the patient of all tumor cells. In the last seven years or so, we have begun to see the attainment of normal life spans in patients with certain rapidly growing tumors. These results have been so striking that the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute are joining forces in a control program to ensure the rapid extension of modern chemotherapy and a new subspecialty has been established by the American Board of Internal Medicine. These last years have also seen the beginning of drug control of the slowly growing tumors and a dawning of understanding of why they are biologically different from their drug-responsive cousins. The biggest challenge is, of course, the chemotherapeutic control of common cancers and I believe we have some, but not yet all, of the research tools necessary to increase life span.
