# Sidney Farber

Source: https://onco.cc/people/sidney-farber/  
OnCo record `sidney-farber` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

In 1947-48 he showed that the folate antagonist aminopterin could send childhood leukaemia into remission, the first drug ever to do so. He then built Dana-Farber and, with Mary Lasker, won the 1971 National Cancer Act.

## Summary

Sidney Farber (1903-1973) was a paediatric pathologist at Children's Hospital Boston who, in 1947, tested Yellapragada Subbarow's folic acid antagonists in children with acute leukaemia, a disease then universally and quickly fatal. His June 1948 New England Journal of Medicine paper reported temporary remissions in ten of sixteen children given aminopterin, the first demonstration that a drug could reverse a cancer, and the origin of methotrexate and of chemotherapy as a discipline. He founded the Children's Cancer Research Foundation in 1947, which became the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the 1948 Jimmy Fund broadcast gave it a public base. In the 1950s he showed actinomycin D was active in Wilms tumour. With Mary Lasker he was the most effective scientific witness in the campaign for federal cancer funding that produced the National Cancer Act of 1971.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Tags: hero; pioneer
- Role: Pathologist who produced the first chemotherapy remissions in childhood leukaemia; father of modern chemotherapy
- Specialisms: Paediatric pathology; Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia; Chemotherapy; Research advocacy

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Farber
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Farber
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: https://www.dana-farber.org/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia](https://onco.cc/cancers/all-leukemia/), [Wilms tumour (nephroblastoma)](https://onco.cc/cancers/wilms-tumor/)
- fronts: [Chemotherapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/chemotherapy/)
- technologies: [Cytotoxic chemotherapy](https://onco.cc/technologies/cytotoxic-chemotherapy/)
- drugs: [Dactinomycin (actinomycin D)](https://onco.cc/drugs/dactinomycin/), [Methotrexate](https://onco.cc/drugs/methotrexate/)
- institutions: [Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/dana-farber/), [The Jimmy Fund](https://onco.cc/institutions/jimmy-fund/)
- people: [Einar "Jimmy" Gustafson](https://onco.cc/people/einar-gustafson/), [Emil "Tom" Frei III](https://onco.cc/people/emil-frei/), [Mary Lasker](https://onco.cc/people/mary-lasker/), [Robert Sandler](https://onco.cc/people/robert-sandler/), [Ted Williams](https://onco.cc/people/ted-williams/)
- bottlenecks: [Funding follows fashion, not burden](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-funding-allocation/), [Rare and paediatric cancers without markets](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-rare-cancers/)

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JSON: https://onco.cc/api/v1/entities/sidney-farber.json