Discovering YOU Magazine December 2018 Issue | Page 15

A History of Cancer Breakthroughs

65 Years in the Making

HEALTH AND WELLNESS

Article from CancerResearch.org

Your Heart Health

and doctors at top institutions around the world. Though distinct, each of these breakthroughs provided crucial pieces to the complex puzzle that CRI has long sought to solve: how the immune system can be used to save the lives of those with cancer.

Foundational Discoveries

Many CRI-funded foundational discoveries helped establish immunotherapy as a viable treatment approach for cancer. One particularly important discovery occurred in 1976, when a team led by Lloyd J. Old, M.D., CRI's founding scientific and medical director, revealed the existence of spontaneously occurring anti-tumor immune responses in cancer patients.

Many of today's advancement in

(BPT) - When the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) was founded in 1953, little was known about cancer and even less about the immune system. CRI was the first - and for many decades the only - research funding organization that believed that we could one day harness the immune system as a powerful weapon against cancer. Since then, the field of cancer immunology has blossomed, and immunotherapy has revolutionized how cancer is treated, thanks in part to work funded by CRI.

This year marks CRI's 65th anniversary. As part of the celebration, the nonprofit dedicated to cancer immunotherapy research released a list of 30 of the most important CRI-funded scientific breakthroughs. Each milestone can be traced directly back to CRI, which has supported more than 3,200 scientists