Table 1 A timeline including some key steps in development of cancer treatments
Other cancer treatments* | Â | Cancer Immunotherapy |
|---|---|---|
Surgery | 2600 BCE | Use of poultice (pharaoh Imhotep’s physicians) |
Surgery under ether anesthesia | 1840s CE | Purposeful infection of tumors |
Radiotherapy | 1890s | Coley’s toxins (deactivated bacteria) were injected to tumor |
Hormonal therapy (estrogen, castration), chemotherapy (nitrogen mustard, antifolates) | 1900–1940s | Case reports of tumor regression after natural viral infections |
Linear accelerator for radiotherapy, combination chemotherapy | 1950s–1970s | Hundreds of case series treating cancer with multiple viruses (e.g., varicella, measles, vaccinia, West Nile, adenovirus, mumps) BCG adopted in bladder cancer |
Stereotactic radiotherapy, antiestrogens | 1980s | Adoptive T cell transfer, cytokine therapies (e.g., IFN-alpha and IL-2) |
Mini-invasive surgery, monoclonal antibodies (rituximab, trastuzumab) | 1990s | HD-IL-2 approved by the FDA |
Antiangiogenic therapies (bevacizumab), kinase inhibitors (imatinib) | 2000s | First oncolytic adenovirus (H101) approved in China |
Small molecular inhibitors of various proteins | 2010– | Cellular immunotherapy (sipuleucel-T, TCR, CART), six different checkpoint inhibitors, oncolytic virus (T-vec) |