The Future of Cancer Research

¹ Director, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Public Health Service, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Some important areas of cancer research that may produce the advances of the future are chemotherapy, cytology, virology, and immunology. Recent progress in these areas is illustrated by a variety of achievements.

One of these is the suppression of choriocarcinoma, a rare, solid malignant tumor of embryonic origin, by treatment with methotrexate. Another is the application of exfoliative cytology to detect early cancer of the uterine cervix. In another recent accomplishment, the Coxsackie B3 virus was passed serially several times through human tumors growing in rats and so "trained" to destroy these tumors in the rats.

Another finding is the observation of a possible relationship between the factors involved in infection and cancer. Studies of the properties of the complex, high molecular weight sugars, known as polysaccharides, showed that they produced in laboratory animals not only reactions characteristic of infectious bacteria but also tumor damage.

Cancer of the lung is being studied intensively in a variety of ways, in efforts to combat the sharp rise in this type of cancer that has occurred particularly among men over 45 years of age. Epidemiological studies have established a statistical association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. Also, studies are under way to improve diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, designed to shorten the interval between onset and treatment of the disease, and to make treatment more effective.

The many kinds of achievements amply illustrate the cooperative nature of cancer research. In fact, it is not a science in itself, but the simultaneous activity of many independent scientific disciplines.