historic

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.

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.

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.

Thalidomide is the drug behind the 1960s birth-defect tragedy, rehabilitated as the first immunomodulatory myeloma drug and the parent of lenalidomide and pomalidomide.