Miguel Bronchud: History of Medical Oncology in the USA – an unfinished tale about trial and error?

Miguel Bronchud, Co-Founder of Regenerative Medicine Solutions, shared a post on LinkedIn:

“History of Medical Oncology in the USA – an unfinished tale about trial and error?

As explained by two giants on the subject By Vincent T. DeVita, MD, and George P. Canellos, MD.
October 10, 2024

In the USA, where it was born, and after a turbulence beginning (commentary published in the September 25, 2024, issue of The ASCO Post), it had become a stable specialty of internal medicine by 1980.

At this point in time, the major problem was how to marshal available resources to freely test the myriad opportunities presented by combination chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and targeted therapy, especially if used together in novel ways.

Here in part 2, they continue discussion with the development of novel treatment protocols and the founding of ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) in the 1960s.

Novel Protocols – Reason and optimism were introduced in protocol design by Howard Skipper, PhD, a biomathematician at Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, who called himself the country’s mouse doctor and who was modeling treatment approaches in rodents bearing L1210 and other drug-sensitive tumors under contract with the CCNSC.1

Using the L1210 model, he was able to quantify cell kill by chemotherapy for both single drugs and combinations to optimize therapy. By 1964, he reported the cure of L1210 in the CDF1 mouse with combination chemotherapy—the first reported cure of a mouse leukemia.”

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