{"slug":"historic","tag":"historic","variants":["historic"],"description":"No description yet","count":4,"kinds":{"drug":4},"related":[],"records":[{"id":"interferon-alfa","kind":"drug","name":"Interferon alfa-2a/2b","route":"/drugs/interferon-alfa/","status":"historic","tldr":"Interferon alfa was the first biologic cancer drug (1986). It treated hairy cell leukaemia, CML, melanoma, kidney cancer and Kaposi sarcoma, and has been replaced almost everywhere by better-tolerated agents."},{"id":"thalidomide","kind":"drug","name":"Thalidomide","route":"/drugs/thalidomide/","status":"approved","tldr":"Thalidomide is the drug behind the 1960s birth-defect tragedy, rehabilitated as the first immunomodulatory myeloma drug and the parent of lenalidomide and pomalidomide."},{"id":"aldesleukin","kind":"drug","name":"Aldesleukin (high-dose IL-2)","route":"/drugs/aldesleukin/","status":"approved","tldr":"High-dose interleukin-2 was the first immunotherapy to cure a small fraction of patients with metastatic melanoma and kidney cancer, at the cost of ICU-level toxicity; today it mainly supports TIL therapy."},{"id":"mechlorethamine","kind":"drug","name":"Mechlorethamine (chlormethine)","route":"/drugs/mechlorethamine/","status":"approved","tldr":"Mechlorethamine, or nitrogen mustard, was the first chemotherapy ever used, in 1940s Hodgkin lymphoma. Today its main use is as a skin gel (Valchlor in the US, Ledaga in Europe) for early cutaneous T-cell lymphoma."}]}