Cancer Chemoprevention: Progress and Promise

Abstract

In the relatively brief history of cancer chemoprevention, hundreds of chemoprevention studies have been reported. The vast majority were uncontrolled studies that were designed and reported in a nonrigorous fashion, which perhaps resulted largely from the zealousness of early chemoprevention researchers to nurture growth of an exciting novel approach through its infancy. Nevertheless, limitations characterizing many of these trials have tended to cloud chemoprevention's record of progress and promise. This tendency overlooks the solid cohort of definitive randomized trials that have successfully addressed many important clinical questions.