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William Halsted performs the first radical mastectomy as a way to treat breast cancer. He removes the patient’s entire breast, surrounding lymphatic tissue, and pectoralis muscle. The "Halsted mastectomy" remains the standard treatment for breast cancer for almost a century. By the 1970s, clinical trials show that less extensive surgery plus radiation is equally effective for treating most breast cancers.
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William Coley, a surgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering, pioneers the first nonsurgical treatment of cancer through an early form of immunotherapy. He treats sarcoma with the toxins of a bacterial skin infection to rally the body’s natural defenses against cancer.
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German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen discovers X-rays while experimenting with electricity in his laboratory. Soon after, he takes a radiograph of his wife’s left hand, as pictured. In 1902, Memorial Sloan Kettering pioneers the use of X-rays in cancer therapy by acquiring two X-ray machines.
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The husband-and-wife team of Pierre Curie, a French chemist, and Marie Curie, a Polish physicist, discover radium. The finding sparks a new era of scientific inquiry into the structure of an atom, and it eventually leads to a better understanding of how radiation can both cause—and treat—cancer.
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Pathologist James Ewing, pictured, helps open the world’s first Head and Neck Cancer Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Ewing discovers a malignant bone tumor, a type of sarcoma, which later becomes known as Ewing sarcoma.
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Physicist Gioacchino Failla, who works at Memorial Sloan Kettering, develops the first external-beam radium therapy device, known as a “radium element pack.” The device is used to treat cancers located in the chest, brain, and abdomen. External beam radiation has since evolved into an important treatment approach for countless people with cancer.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the National Cancer Act of 1937 to provide support for cancer research. It establishes the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as the federal government’s primary agency to address research and training needs for the cause, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.
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Teams of investigators, including those from Memorial Sloan Kettering, report that the nitrogen mustards developed as chemical warfare agents can be used effectively against certain forms of cancer. Nitrogen mustard belongs to a class of drugs that kill cells by chemically modifying their DNA. In 1949, the FDA approves nitrogen mustard (mechlorethamine) for the treatment of cancer, paving the way for cancer chemotherapy.
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The first bone marrow transplant between identical twins is performed by E. Donnall Thomas. The patient, who has leukemia, is given radiotherapy and receives healthy bone marrow from an identical twin. In 1968, physician-scientist Robert Good performs the first successful bone marrow transplant from a genetically matched sibling, permanently curing a boy who was born with severe combined immunodeficiency.
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Emil Frei III pioneers the use of combination chemotherapy. He leads a study that demonstrates treatment with multiple chemotherapy agents could produce lasting remissions, and sometimes cures, in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia — a disease that was uniformly fatal at the time. Combination chemotherapy is now a standard approach for treating many adult and pediatric cancers.
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Monroe E. Wall and Mansukh Wani discover that extracts from the bark of the Pacific yew tree are toxic to living cells. Wall and colleagues isolate the most cytotoxic compound from the tree’s bark (pictured) and call it paclitaxel. In 1979, Susan Band Horwitz discovers that it kills cancer cells by stopping cell division. Paclitaxel (Taxol®) is currently used to treat ovarian, breast, and lung cancer, and Kaposi's sarcoma.
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Seated at the Resolute Desk, President Richard Nixon signs the National Cancer Act of 1971, announcing a “war on cancer.” Public interest in cancer therapeutics surges, along with an outpouring of funds towards cancer treatment
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The p53 gene, which is the most commonly mutated gene in human cancer, is discovered. It is a tumor-suppressor gene, which means its protein product, p53, helps control cell proliferation and suppress tumor growth.
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The FDA approves the hepatitis B vaccine, which was developed by Maurice Hillman at Merck, based on insights from Baruch Blumberg, who discovered the hepatitis B virus. This is considered the first cancer vaccine because it prevents chronic hepatitis B infections, a principal cause of liver cancer.
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Memorial Sloan Kettering physician-scientists Malcolm Moore and Karl Welte isolate a protein from human cells that stimulates new blood growth. Called G-CSF, this molecule forms the basis of filgrastim (Neupogen®), which has been shown to reduce the frequency and severity of infections in cancer patients and to help them recover faster after chemotherapy. It becomes one of the most important cancer drugs ever developed.
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The FDA approves BCG, a bacterial vaccine, for the treatment of bladder cancer, based on results of a clinical trial conducted by Memorial Sloan Kettering urologic surgeon Harry Herr and tumor immunologist Herbert Oettgen (shown). BCG remains a primary treatment for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.
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Based on genetic pedigree studies by Mary Claire King, a team from Myriad Genetics clones and sequences the cancer predisposition gene BRCA1. Specific inherited mutations in this gene greatly increase the risks of breast, ovarian, and other cancer types. The following year, the same group sequences the gene BRCA2. These breakthroughs confirm the genetic basis of some cancers.
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The FDA approves imatinib (Gleevec®) for the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia. The drug, which interferes with the action of a mutant protein called BCR-ABL, is one of the first successful targeted cancer therapies, and it is now used to treat a number of cancer types. Scientists Brian Druker, Nicholas Lydon, and Charles Sawyers shared the 2009 Lasker~DeBakey Award for their work on the drug’s development.
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Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) researchers Michel Sadelain, Renier Brentjens, and Isabelle Rivière develop genetically engineered T cells with a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR), now a powerful way to fight leukemia and other blood cancers. In this approach, T cells are collected from a patient’s blood, genetically engineered to recognize certain proteins on cancer cells, and infused back into the patient’s bloodstream.
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FDA approves first HPV vaccine
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Radiation oncologists at Memorial Sloan Kettering develop a stereotactic radiosurgery technique to allow single-day, high-dose treatment of metastatic brain tumors.
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The FDA approves Sipuleucel-T (Provenge®) as the first therapeutic cancer vaccine for some men with prostate cancer. It harnesses the patient’s own immune system to attack cancer cells.
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The FDA approves two new immune therapies for melanoma, pembrolizumab (Keytruda®) and nivolumab (Opdivo®), which target a checkpoint protein called PD-1. In 2015, the FDA approves nivolumab and pembrolizumab for non-small cell lung cancer, and nivolumab for renal cell carcinoma.
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The FDA authorizes the tumor DNA-sequencing test MSK-IMPACT™ (integrated mutation profiling of actionable cancer targets). Developed by researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK), the test looks for genetic mutations and other alterations in patients’ tumors. Since January 2014, MSK-IMPACT™ has been used at MSK to analyze the tumors of more than 20,000 patients with advanced cancers. The data help guide treatment decisions and open the door to precision medicine approaches.
