2000 - Brian Druker, MD, begins phase II trial of STI-571, a drug that inhibts an enzyme present only in chronic myelogenous leukemia cells, after it induced remission in all 31 CML patients of his phase I study.

2000 - Draft sequence of the human genome announced in June.

2000 - A team of scientists that includes ACS Clinical Research Professor Waun Ki Hong, MD, announces that the combination of chemotherapy with p53 gene therapy caused tumors to shrink in 25 to 30 of head and neck cancer patients.

2000 - The DNA Microarray Chip technology is successfully used by a team of 30 researchers, including ACS Clinical Research Professor Ronald Levy, MD, to identify two types of lymphoma that look the same under the microscope, but that respond very differently to standard therapy.

2000-John Mendelsohn, MD, reports that a monoclonal antibody, IMC-C225, developed while he was an ACS Professor of Clinical Oncology, is effective in the treatment of refractory colon and head and neck cancers.

2000 - Mylotarg, a chemotherapeutic molecule bound to a monoclonal antibody against a tumor cell surface protein, is approved by the FDA for the treatment of acute myelogenous leukemia. ACS Clinical Research Professor Irwin Bernstein, MD, and former grantee Eric Sievers, MD, developed the compound.

2000 - After three years of study by Raymond Warrell, MD, arsenic trioxide (Trisenox) is approved as an orphan drug for treatment of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia.

2000 - The cox2 inhibitor, celecoxib (Celebrex) is approved by FDA for the prevention of colon cancer polyps in individuals carrying the APC gene for familial adenomatous polyposis, a form of colon cancer. Clinical trials for prevention of sporadic colon cancer and other cancers are ongoing.

2000 - Donald Kufe, MD, reports that the first human clinical trials of endostatin prove that it is safe and may have anti-cancer potential.

2001 - FDA approval of Gleevec (formerly STI 571) for treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia, based on clinical trials conducted by Brian Druker, MD; initial tests of Gleevec in rare gastrointestinal tumor promising.

2001 - Former grantees Leonard Saltz, MD, and Albert LoBuglio, MD, report that IMC-C225 monoclonal antibody against the epidermal growth factor receptor plus the drug irinotecan, produce a response in colorectal cancers resistant to standard treatment in phase II trials.

2001 - Former ACS Research Professor Leland Hartwell, PhD, becomes 32nd ACS supported researcher to win the Nobel Prize. Dr. Hartwell was recognized for conceptually groundbreaking research on the cell division cycle, begun in the early 1970s with the help of an ACS grant.

2002 - DNA microarray technology (Gene Chip) developed by Stephen Friend, MD, PhD, is successful in predicting which node-negative breast cancer patients will go on to develop metastasis and thus benefit from aggressive adjuvant therapy.

2002 - ACS Professor Bert Vogelstein, MD, announces a new screening test for colon cancer that detects specific genetic abnormalities in stool samples of up to 70% of patients with colon cancer.

2002 - Using archived samples supplied by the Ovarian Genetic Clinic of former ACS Clinical Oncology Fellow David A. Fishman, MD, scientists from the FDA and National Cancer Institute use the new science of proteomics combined with artificial intelligence to analyze patterns of blood proteins that were able to detect ovarian cancer at an early stage in women at high risk.