Contributions to Modern Day Cancer Research

Often, the knowledge of the origins of modern medical fields is not known. Many medical discoveries were initially rejected or not regarded by the scientific community or the public as being accurate. But their discoveries would become the foundation of modern medical fields.

Gregor Mendel is known as the father of modern genetics, as he pioneered the idea of heredity, which would be used to understand cancer development and research. While living at a monastery during the mid 1800s, he began experimenting with cross breeding pea plants, and he observed what would be known as inheritance patterns. He gathered statistics with every new generation of pea plants, discovering the existence of dominant and recessive genes in determining traits and features of pea plants. His experiments built the foundation of Mendelian genetics, the idea that individuals inherit two genes, one from their mother and one from their father, determining that physical trait. He coined terms that are still used in genetic research today, such as homozygous, which means that both genes from both parents are the same and heterozygous, which means that each gene is different. The location of a trait on a chromosome is called an allele, and genes determine what that trait will appear as. Genetics would become the key in determining reasons behind medical diagnoses, such as cancer.

The imbalance of the four bodily humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile was once believed to be the cause of diseases in humans. For centuries that theory was believed by physicians and the general public. In the mid-1800s, Rudolf Virchow’s research on leukemia, pathology, and cell theory broke down existing misinformation about how diseases are contracted. As a physician, he saw an increase in white blood cells in patients, describing the occurrence on a cellular level as a blood disease. He would later name this disease leukemia. His continued research into pathology and leukemia allowed him to theorize that diseases are not caused by organs or tissues, but start from individual cells. Virchow’s contributions to pathology research built the foundation of modern pathology knowledge and teachings.

Research into chemotherapy, a treatment used to fight against cancer, began in the 1900s, especially after World War Two. Jane Wright became one of the first people to report the use of nitrogen-mustard agents as a cancer treatment for Hodgkin’s disease, chronic myelogenous leukemia, and lymphoma cancers. She tested folic acid antagonists that block folic acid production in the body as a cancer treatment. Folic acid aids cells in producing amino acids, and by blocking their production, it stops the production of tumor and non-tumor cells. This experimental treatment was seen to be highly effective against cancer cells. Wright also developed the nonsurgical procedure catheters to deliver chemotherapy drugs. She drug tested biopsies of cancerous tumors to create specialized drugs to combat specific tumors. Chemotherapy would become one of the most used treatments to combat cancer.

Smoking and its detrimental long-term effects are common knowledge in the modern age, but that was not always so. Without scientific research backing, cigarette companies promoted the safety and stress relieving abilities of smoking, causing a generation of people’s health to be negatively affected. Many claimed that lung cancer was caused by industrial and automotive pollution. In the mid-1900s, Ernst Wynder and Evarts Graham were some of the first medical professionals to study the negative effects of long-term smoking. Their study proved that long-term smoking contributed to higher chances of contracting lung cancer. They surveyed nonsmokers, light, moderate, heavy, excessive, and chain smokers. Their study saw a correlation between the average daily cigarette consumption and people diagnosed with lung cancer. Their study pioneered the beginning of debunking the mainstream media’s misinformation about smoking.

There are still many unanswered questions about certain cancers’ origins, inheritance patterns, and longevity. Although new medical fields will be discovered, developing our current fields should be prioritized. This generation, the largest group of medical professionals in centuries, will continue in developing these fields.