- Seizing the moment: Introduction | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s and the future
1980s
In the 1970s, scientists knew less about the surface of immune system cells than they did about the surface of the moon. This unfamiliarity was especially frustrating in the study of leukemia and lymphoma, cancers that affect the very cells that fight disease.
The groundwork for a new form of therapy against these and other disorders was laid at Dana-Farber in the mid-1970s by Harvey Cantor, MD, and Stuart Schlossman, MD. Cantor showed that T cells – the "chief dispatchers" of the immune system – come in two varieties in mice: helper cells, which activate the immune response to disease, and suppressor cells, which switch it off. Schlossman and Leonard Chess, MD, achieved the same feat in humans. With those twin discoveries, made on the seventh floor of the brand-new Charles A. Dana Cancer Center, the fields of human and mouse immunology were born.
A lab technician prepares slides of monoclonal antibodies for research.
The Cantor and Schlossman/Chess labs recruited a corps of young scientists whose work over the next decade would permanently alter doctors' approach to nonsolid tumors such as leukemia and lymphoma. In the late 1970s the medical world was transfixed by the potential of "monoclonal antibodies" in fighting disease. Produced by immune system B cells, antibodies are proteins that find and kill abnormal or ailing cells. B cells identify their targets by markings, or antigens, on their surface and release antibodies against them. Scientists had come to think monoclonal antibodies – identical to one another and produced in the millions – offered a new way to diagnose and treat many diseases, including cancer.
Dana-Farber became a hotbed of monoclonal antibody discovery and application. The young researchers on Dana 7 achieved an unrivaled string of firsts: Lee Nadler, MD, was the first to generate monoclonal antibodies to B cells and B-cell leukemias and lymphomas; Robert Todd, MD, did the same for monocytes (large white blood cells); James Griffin, MD, for myeloid cells and acute myelogenous leukemia cells; Jerome Ritz, MD, for lymphoid leukemia, and Ellis Reinherz, MD, for normal T cells. In 1981, the group published a new study, on average, every six days.
Today, monoclonals are among the most versatile entities in medicine, used in research, diagnosis, and therapy. Biomedical labs everywhere employ them to detect particular proteins inside or on the surface of cells. Much of what doctors now know about autoimmune diseases and AIDS was discovered with monoclonals. The precision of these compounds – their affinity for specific substances or cells – also makes them ideal tools for diagnosing illness. When a patient anywhere in the world develops leukemia or lymphoma, he or she has a blood test to determine its type. The reagents used in those tests are monoclonal antibodies created and developed at Dana-Farber.
Monoclonals entered the world of therapeutic medicine in 1979, when Nadler and his colleagues became the first to administer one to a patient. In the 1980s, Institute scientists began using them to kill cancer cells within harvested bone marrow, then reinjecting the marrow into patients. This technique helped push the success rate for autologous transplants, which do not require an outside donor, from about 20 percent in the early 1980s to between 40 and 50 percent today.
During the next decade, pharmaceutical manufacturer Idec introduced Rituxan, a monoclonal treatment that strikes a type of B cell first identified by Dana-Farber scientists. Rituxan targets the CD20 antigen, which was discovered in Nadler's lab. Combined with other therapies, the drug has improved survival rates of patients with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis.
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- Seizing the moment: Introduction | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s and the future
