Chronology of Anticancer Drug Development

Abstract

Cancer was not recognized as a major cause of death in western industrialized countries until the nineteenth century, but the cancer-related mortality increased rapidly after the decrease in lethal infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and typhoid, following national efforts to improve hygiene and public health. The decrease in these diseases also rapidly increased the average life span, and since the twentieth century, cancer has become one of the leading causes of death, demonstrating that it is highly age-dependent. In the United States, life expectancy increased from 47 to 68 years in the first 50 years of the twentieth century, and cancer had been the second most common cause of death since 1933 [1]. Following this, cancer therapy has emerged as a matter of the national concern, and the F.D. Roosevelt administration enacted the world's first National Cancer Act in 1937, which sought the ways to overcome cancer at a national level by establishing the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that specialized in cancer research [2]. Later, European countries started making efforts to stop the spread of cancer, based on their national research institutions.