6-MP, Vinca Alkaloids and A National Treatment Effort By The US
Joseph Burchenal, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, with Farber's help, started his own methotrexate study and found the same effects. He then decided to try to develop anti-metabolites in the same way as Farber, by making small changes in a metabolite needed by a cell to divide. With the help of George Hitchings and Gertrude Elion, two pharmaceutical chemists who were working at the Burroughs Wellcome Co. in Tuckahoe, many purine analogues were tested, culminating in the discovery of 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP), which was subsequently shown to be a highly active antileukemic drug.
The Eli Lilly natural products group found that alkaloids of the Madagascar periwinkle (Vinca rosea), originally discovered in a screen for anti-diabetic drugs, blocked proliferation of tumour cells. The antitumour effect of the vinca alkaloids (e.g. vincristine) was later shown to be due to their ability to inhibit microtubule polymerization, and therefore cell division.
The United States Congress created a National Cancer Chemotherapy Service Center (NCCSC) at the NCI in 1955 in response to early successes. This was the first federal programme to promote drug discovery for cancer – unlike now, most pharmaceutical companies were not yet interested in developing anticancer drugs. The NCCSC developed the methodologies and crucial tools (like cell lines and animal models) for chemotherapeutic development.
Read more about this topic: History Of Cancer Chemotherapy
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