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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Anticancer chemotherapy

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:6603523
Despite troubled beginnings, anticancer chemotherapy has made significant contribution to the control of cancer in man, particularly within the last two decades. Early conceptual observations awakened the scientific community to the potentials of cancer chemotherapy. There are now more than 50 agents that are active in causing regression of clinical cancer. Chemotherapy's major conceptual contributions are two-fold. First, there is now proof that patients with overt metastatic disease can be cured, and second, to provide a strategy for control of occult metastases. In man, chemotherapy has resulted in normal life expectancy for some patients who have several types of metastatic cancers, including choriocarcinoma, Burkitt's lymphomas, Wilm's tumor, acute lymphocytic leukemia, Hodgkins disease, diffuse histiocytic lymphoma and others. Anticancer chemotherapy in Veterinary medicine has evolved from the use of single agents, which produce only limited remissions, to the concept of combination chemotherapy. Three basic principles underline the design of combination chemotherapy protocols; the fraction of tumor cell killed by one drug is independent of the fraction killed by another drug; drugs with different mechanisms of action should be chosen so that the antitumor effects will be additive; and since different classes of drugs have different toxicities the toxic effects will not be additive.
Research Organization:
Pacific Northwest Lab., Richland, WA (USA)
DOE Contract Number:
AC06-76RL01830
OSTI ID:
6603523
Report Number(s):
PNL-SA-16354; ON: DE89002371
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English