DeVita Vincent T, Chu Edward
Yale Cancer Center, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
Cancer Res. 2008 Nov 1;68(21):8643-53. doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-07-6611.
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.
利用化疗治疗癌症始于20世纪初，当时人们试图通过开发利用啮齿动物可移植肿瘤筛选化学物质的方法，来缩小可能影响该疾病的化学物质范围。然而，正是四个与第二次世界大战相关的项目以及从中衍生出的药物的作用，为1955年建立名为癌症化疗国家服务中心的国家药物研发工作提供了动力。20世纪60年代和70年代初，联合化疗治愈儿童急性白血病和晚期霍奇金病的能力，克服了当时人们对药物治愈晚期癌症能力普遍持有的悲观态度，推动了辅助化疗的研究，并助力推动了国家癌症项目的发展。如今，随着重要的分子异常情况被用于筛选潜在的新药以及进行靶向治疗，化疗也发生了变化。
