Selective toxicity, an essential requirement for successful chemotherapy

Chemotherapeutic research is judged, ultimately, by its ability to produce new and successful drugs for the treatment of disease. Success may be fortuitous or it may be the result of an inspired guess into the future. It is my task to-day to examine current theories on metabolite analogues and to assess their value as a pointer towards further progress. A glance at past progress may help us to assess more fairly the present position. Table 4 gives a short list of notable chemotherapeutic drugs together with their origin and date of introduction into European medicine.