01 FN: Vincent DeVita

A treatment for Hodgkins Disease developed by Vincent DeVita, M.D., the Amy and Joseph Perella Professor of Medical Oncology and former director of Yale Cancer Center, was voted as the Top Advance in 50 Years of Modern Oncology by the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

Discovered by DeVita in 1965, the treatment known as MOPP was the first chemotherapy breakthrough for advanced cancer in adults. The four-drug combination chemotherapy regimen induced long-term remissions in more than half of patients with aggressive Hodgkins lymphoma. DeVita’s breakthrough sparked the first hope that advanced cancers could be cured with drug treatment, and paved the way for 90 percent cure rates for patients with this disease today.