Researched
Chemotherapy
Drugs that attack fast-dividing cells were first used against cancer.
Open in the interactive tree →After observing that mustard gas destroyed white blood cells, Yale pharmacologists Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman gave nitrogen mustard to a lymphoma patient in 1942. Sidney Farber produced remissions in childhood leukaemia with aminopterin in 1947-48. Combination chemotherapy later made some cancers, such as childhood leukaemia and testicular cancer, curable.
Prerequisites
- Organic Synthesis (Wöhler)1828First chemo drugs (nitrogen mustards) are synthetic organic compounds
- Cell theory1838
- Periodic Table of Elements1869
- Salvarsan: the magic bullet1909Ehrlich coined 'chemotherapy' for Salvarsan
Unlocks
- Antiretroviral therapy (HIV)1996
- Checkpoint Immunotherapy2014–2018
- CAR-T cell therapy2017
- Curing canceropen