Imatinib Changed Everything

The initial successes of combination chemotherapy were stunning. Childhood acute leukemia, several forms of lymphoma, and testicular cancer all became largely curable malignant conditions. Adjuvant chemotherapy led to dramatically longer survival among persons with breast cancer. The fundamental principle of chemotherapy was to target dividing cells, because it was assumed that more rapid proliferation than “normal” was an underlying common defect in cancer. The effective agents generally attacked DNA or the mitotic spindle. Some tumors, such as breast cancer and prostate cancer, were susceptible to hormonal manipulation because of growth regulation of their normal-tissue counterparts.Gradually data emerged that, except . . .