Therapeutic milestones in tumor therapy

Abstract

The treatment of cancer has witnessed dramatic improvement throughout the 20th century. All three classical pillars of cancer therapy, tumour surgery, radiation oncology and medical oncology have provided impressive results which early in our century had not been anticipated to this extent. Particular mile stones of treatment include the discovery that prostate cancer is a hormone-sensitive tumour and the development of curative chemotherapy for many haematological neoplasms, or advanced testicular cancer. Adjuvant systemic treatment has led to significant improvement in the prognosis of patients with breast cancer and other solid tumours. More recently preoperative chemotherapy is gaining an important role in particular disorders such as non-small cell lung cancer. The most fascinating advances, however, have originated from our improved understanding of the molecular and cellular basis of malignancy. The development of monoclonal antibodies targeting specific tumour antigens, tumour vaccines and cancer gene therapy are all clinically relevant results of diligent basic and translational experimental cancer research.