Chemotherapy cure of Burkitt lymphoma
Curación del linfoma de Burkitt con quimioterapia
- Date
- 1960s · confidence medium
- Place
- Mulago Hospital, Kampala, Uganda
- Credited to
- Denis Burkitt and the Mulago team (with J. L. Ziegler and Charles Wright)
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Burkitt lymphoma tumours, until then fatal, regressed after short courses of cyclophosphamide and other cytostatics. It was one of the first cancers cured by drugs alone.
The first remissions were observed in 1960-61; the cure series date from the second half of the 1960s, with no single accepted date. In Uganda the prognosis still depends on access to chemotherapy.
What it led to
- combination treatments curing over 90% of cases in rich countries
- discovery of the Epstein-Barr virus in Burkitt cells (1964)
- arguments for the infectious origin of cancer