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Researchers supported by the American Cancer Society have contributed to major advances in cancer research. Among the most significant accomplishments are: 1980 - Early detection guidelines are set for breast cancer. 1981 - T. Ming Chu, PhD, and Gerald P. Murphy, MD, develop the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for screening and early detection of prostate cancer. 1981 - ACS Research Professor Robert Weinberg, PhD, isolates neu oncogene from rats, later shown to be homolog of human HER2/neu oncogene in breast cancer. 1981 - Curt I. Civin, MD, discovers the CD34+ protein on the surface of blood stem cells that identifies those among other blood cells in bone marrow; receives four US patents to harvest stem cells without puncturing bone. 1982 - ACS begins Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS II), a study of 1.2 million men and women to analyze risk and preventive factors involved in cancer. 1982 - ACS grantee Richard Palmiter, PhD, produces the first "transgenic mouse"--a mouse with a gene for rat growth hormone. 1982 - ACS Clinical Research Professor Ronald Levy, MD, successfully treats a lymphoma patient with monoclonal antibody. 1983 - Ralph Steinman, MD, discovers the role of dendritic cells, which later become the basis of therapeutic cancer vaccines. 1984 - ACS grantee Sherie Morrison, PhD, makes a chimeric monoclonal antibody that is half mouse, half human, and can thus be produced in large quantites by mice but not be rejected by humans. 1985 - ACS Research Professor Edward Harlow, PhD, clones the mutant p53 gene. 1985 - Bernard Fisher, MD, demonstrates that lumpectomy plus radiation is equivalent to mastectomy for breast cancer survival.
1986 - ACS Research Professor Robert Weinberg, PhD, clones the first of some 20 now-known tumor-suppressor genes: the retinoblastoma gene of a childhood eye cancer.
1986 - ACS grantee David I. G. Kingston, PhD, develops Taxol and Taxotere as useful cancer drugs.
1987 - Grantee Mario Capecchi, PhD, succeeds in "knocking-out" specific genes in mice, thus allowing a study of the function of a gene of interest in an intact animal.
1987 - ACS Research Professor David Baltimore, PhD, and ACS grantee Owen Witte, PhD, show that the abnormal fusion protein characteristic of chronic myelogenous leukemia is a tyrosine kinase enzyme.
1988 - Dennis Slamon, MD, discovers that the HER2/neu receptor is overexpressed in 15%-30% of breast cancers, and is an unfavorable prognostic feature.
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