|
1800
First mastectomy for breast cancer was performed.
1895 Wilhelem Conrad Rontgen discovers
a new kind of radiation that he calls x-rays.
1896 Removel of the ovaries is performed.
for the first time as part of breast cancer treatment.
1897 Paul Ehrlich develops the side-chain theory--the root of his target therapy,or"magic bullet," concepts of drugs that go straight to their intended target to treat disease.
1898 Physicist Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium and later use to effectively treat tumors.
1900 Thor Stenbeck cures a patient with skin cancer using small doses of daily radiation therapy. This technique is later referred to as fractionated radiation therapy, which is the basic of radition treatment used today.
Early 1900 George Papanicolaou finds that vaginal cell smears(pap smears) reveal the presence of cancer.
1940 Charles Huggins uses synthetic hormones to treat prostate cancer and shows that some breast and prostate cancer cells are hormone-dependent.
1943 The first electron linear accelerator disigned for radiation therapy is developed. Today, the linear accelerator is the most widely used treatment device in the Western world.
1946 The beginning of chemotherapy as treatment for cancer can be traced to a chemical warfare used during World War 1. Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman use nitrogen mustard, an agent derived from a deadly gas employed during the First World War, to treat a non-Hodgkins lymphoma patients.
1947 Sydney Farber Finds that folic acid derivative inhibits acute leukemia and uses it to induce remission in children with acute lymphocytic leukemia. This leads to category of drugs that interfere with cell processes.
1949 Swedish Neurosurgeon Lars Leksell invents a sterotactic apparatus exclusively for human functional neurosurgery. In the late 1960s, Leksell develops the Gamma Knife--today a popular radiosurgical tool that has the ability to eradicate cancerous tissue with a single high dose of radiation.
1951 Estrogen and testosterone are found to drive the growth of breast and prostate cancers, respectively.
1953 James Watson and Franis Crick publish their paper on the helical structure of DNA, the hereditary material that is the information archive of all cell activity.
1957 Alick Isaacs and Jean Lindenmann discover interferon, which is used today to treat kidney cancer, melanoma and bladder cancer. Charles Heidelberger introduces 5-fluorouracil, an anti cancer drug used
today to treat colorectal, breast, stomach and pacreatic cancers.
1958 Roy Hertz and Min Chiu Li demonstrated that methotrexate alone can cure choriocarcinoma, the first solid tumors in humans to be cured by drug therapy. Methotrexate is still used to treat patients with ALL, certain lymphomas, osteosarcoma, and choriocarcinoma.
1960 Peter Nowell and David Hungerford in Philadelphia discover the cytogenetic marker for chronic myeloid leukemia
1962 Stanley Cohen discovers the epidermal growth factor. The recaptor for EGF was identified more than a decade later in 1978 led to a class of agents known as EGFR inhibitors, which include colorectal cancer drugs, Erbitux and Vectibix
1963 Vincent DeVita,George Canellos and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute use combination chemotherapy to treat lymphomas. In the late 1960s they cure patients with Hodgkins and non-Hodgkins lymphoma using nitrogen mustard, vincristine,procarbazine and prednisone.
1964 A virus-the Epstein-Barr virus- is linked to human cancer for the first time.
1965 Jame Holland, Emil Freireich and Emil Frei show that combination of methotrexate, vincristine,6-MP, and prednisone- the pump regimen - induces long term remission in children with ALL. This development initiates the move to combination chemotherapy to treat cancer.
1966 The receptor for estrogen is identified. A direct target now exists to stop the growth of breast cancer.
1970 Computed tomography(CT) magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)and positron emission tomography(PET)are developed
1971 Judah Folkman demonstrates the central role of angiogenesis-the formation of blood vessel-in tumor growth and metastasis in his landmark paper.
Mid 1970 The development of molecular cloning leads to important breakthrough
in many areas of research, including the genetics of cancer development and better understanding of the signaling processes that direct cells behavior.
1974 Lawrence Einhorn cure advanced testicular cancer with cisplatin. The introduction of cisplatin-containing regimens in the mid 1970 for metastatic testicular cancer changes the cure rate from 5 to 6 percent.
1975 Methods are developed to sequence DNA. This technology makes it possible to identify and target mutated genes and DNA abnormalities that cause cancer.
George Kohler and Cesar Milstein develop the technique for producting monocional antibodies against defined proteins.
1976 Michael Bishop and Harold Varmus Discovered oncogenes,genes that control normal cell growth and division and can transform a normal cell into a malignent cell.
Clinical trails begin to show that lumpectomy with radiation can be as effective as mastectomy.
1979 The most frequently mutated gene in human cancer.
1970to 1980 Studies linked specific cancer to infectious diseases, such as human papillomavirus to cervial cancer and hepatitis B to liver cancer.
1980 The first highly anti-nausea drugs are developed to alleviate this chemotherapy side effect.
1981 C-erbB2 cancer-causing gene discovered in mice;the human version of the gene(HER2) is later discovered in 1985.
1986 Nerve-sparing prostatectomy designed to preserve potency and urinary continence is introduced.
1987 Dennis Slamon and his colleagues publish data showing a link between HER2 gene ampplification and aggressive type of breast cancer.
1988 Intensity-modulated radiation therapy is developed. This high precision radiation conforms to the three-dimensional shape of the tumor using multiple beams of radiation with varying intensity from different angles.
1989 The gene for vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)is indentified. VEGF is an important protein molecule involved in angiogeneis, and discovery of the growth factor leads to a new class of drugs that cut off the tumor's blood supply by targeting VEGF.
1991 The first gene therapy for cancer is attempted.
1994 BRCA1 is the first discovered breast cancer susceptibility gene.
1997 The FDA approves Rituxan, the first monoclonal antibody, to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
1998 Tamoxifen is approved based on it's ability to reduce the risk of breast cancer by half in high risk women participating in the breast cancer trial.
2000 The da Vinci robotic surgery system becomes the first robotic system
approved by the FDA for general laparoscopic surgery. Use of the robot assisted surgery was the first documented in 1985.
2001 The FDA grants accelerated approvel to Gleevec to treat chronic myeloid luekemia.
2004 The FDA approves Avastin for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer.
2005 Data presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium show. Oncotype DX,a 21 gene profiling test, successfully predicts whether chemotherapy is needed based on the recurrance risk score.
2006 The FDA approves adjuvant (Post Surgery) Herceptin for early stage HER2-positive breast cancer based on data that show the drug results in a 52 percent improvement in preventing recurrence.
2007 The FDA approves Nexavar for primary liver cancer, making it the only drug approved for liver cancer.
2008 Data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting validates KRAS as the first molecular marker to determine targeted treatment in metastatic colorectal cancer. Studies show that patients with cancer expressing the wild-type gene respond better to Erbitux plus chemotherapy than patients with certain mutant forms of KRAS.
|
