Combination cancer therapy: Presidential address.

First I want to thank you for the privilege and honor of serving as your President during this past year. It has been a turbulent and an important year for cancer research and accelerated support is in process. I would like to take this opportunity to present some of the conceptual and practical advances that have been made in cancer chemotherapy in the past 15 to 20 years and to outline future projections. In 1955 I arrived at the National Cancer Institute. The need for the development of systemic treatment for cancer, the encouragement from my superiors, and the opportunity to observe the very dramatic effect that could be achieved occasionally in the leukemias through treatment developed by Dr. S. Farber and Dr. J. H. Burchenal confirmed my interest in medical oncology and chemotherapy. I have been extraordinarily fortunate in the superiors, associates, and trainees with whom I have been associated. I would like to mention three specifically. When I arrived at the National Cancer Institute, it was Dr. Gordon Zubrod who provided the friendliness, stimulation, guidance, and opportunity to work, and he has continued to do so. Five months after my arrival, a gentleman appeared in my office and announced that his name was Emil Freireich. I allowed that, aside from being somewhat long, this was indeed a very excellent name and that anyone with a name like that had to