The Footte Memorial Lecture was delivered on the 6th December 2006. The President was in the chair. After a minutes silence in memory of Dr Footte He introduced the speaker, Professor Peter Johnson, of the Cancer Research UK clinical centre Southampton. His lecture was entitled The Revolution in Cancer Treatment.

He reviewed Dr Footte’s medical career and noted that the origins of chemotherapeutic cancer treatment happened during his later career when it was observed that those who died in the 1st World War from mustard gas poisoning suffered an obliteration of the lymphoid tissue. In 1942 a derivative nitrogen mustard wastried as a treatment for Hodgkin’s disease with resulting lymph node regression which he described as a landmark in cancer treatment. Professor Johnson then described the early important successes of Sydney Farber using the antimetabolite aminopterin in 1948 to block folate, thus gaining remission of childhood leukaemia, and Li & Hertz with methotrexate to cure chorion carcinoma, and the further development of agents such as cisplatin in the 60s and 70s. Since 1995 there has been a golden age of cancer drug discovery which is reflected in a 10% drop in mortality.

He described work going on in Southampton and said we are now in an era of targeted treatment using immunotherapy, and he described using various antibodies either directly or indirectly on the tumour cell or to deliver radiation. He said there was a proliferation of targets: ‘We know more and more about the molecular origins of tumours and are finally beginning to direct treatments at specific defects.’

Professor Johnson was very upbeat about the future. He finished by saying that even if we do not have cures in particular cases we may have the means to control the cancer even if the tumour has not completely gone.

There followed a lively discussion. There being no other business the meeting closed at 10.30 pm