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Sidney Farber

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.

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.

Role
Pathologist who produced the first chemotherapy remissions in childhood leukaemia; father of modern chemotherapy
Specialisms
Paediatric pathologyAcute lymphoblastic leukaemiaChemotherapyResearch advocacy

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