Chapter 2: Hormone Treatment of Tumors and the Prize Events in 1966

At the beginning of the twentieth century cancer was a serious and frequently lethal disease among many other equally life threatening diseases. The relative importance of cancer has increased not least in industrialized countries because of improved longevity and major advances in treatment of other medical illnesses. The introduction of antibiotics and prophylactic use of vaccines to prevent infectious diseases as well as major improvements in management of coronary heart diseases have been critical. In some countries death from cancer today even supersedes that caused by the latter kind of afflictions. In the course of the previous century there have been a number of discoveries in biology and medicine that have progressively, and sometimes dramatically, changed our understanding of the mechanisms of cancer development. Many of these advances have been recognized by Nobel Prizes after the award to Rous and Huggins in 1966. To a large extent the revolutionary insights have become possible because of the introduction of techniques of molecular biology. But let us first see how it all started. The selected samples given will refer to various relevant Nobel Prizes awarded or in a few cases discoveries potentially worthy of a Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. To get the full story it is worth consulting leading books on this topic, be they the more popular, already mentioned, The Emperor of All Maladies. A Biography of Cancer or a modern textbook like The Biology of Cancer. The early means of treatment were surgery and irradiation with X-rays. At a somewhat later stage chemotherapy and immunotherapy were introduced…