Evolution of modern treatment of childhood acute leukemia and cancer: adventures and battles in the 1970s and 1980s.

This article summarizes the adventures and explorations in the 1970s and 1980s in the treatment of children with leukemia and cancer that paved the way for the current success in childhood cancers. Indeed, these were adventures and bold steps into unchartered waters. Because childhood leukemia the most common of the childhood cancers, success in childhood leukemia was pivotal in the push toward cure of all childhood cancers. The success in childhood leukemia illustrates how treatment programs were designed using clinical- and biology-based risk factors seen in the patients.