Clinical Oncology: Onward and Upward

Change is inherent in the field of oncology, as fundamental science has exploded our knowledge of the cancer cell.How that change will benefit patients depends on the process of drug development and evaluation, especially when a target is known or presumed.It is, after all, a risky business as well as an expensive business to develop new treatments that will pass review of regulatory bodies and acceptance by patients and physicians.Despite these many hurdles, the field continues to carry on with the passage of time.Certainly, in the last 5 years since my editorship of the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), the change is noteworthy.By way of return to the history of JCO from those early days to the present, I should note that I was asked to serve as Associate Editor by the inaugural Editor-in-Chief, Dr Jospeph Bertino, a pioneer in our field from many points of view.We were cautioned about losing money, and we all worked to gain visibility for the Journal in those early days.During my tenure as Editor-in-Chief, we tried to establish visibility in the overseas field with Spanish and Chinese versions, as well as supplemental efforts in the audio journal area through AudioMedica (London, UK).The field of medical oncology and the scope of the Journal has grown concomitantly with sections devoted to basic science, reviews, quality of life, images, and correspondence.The impact factor grew proportional to the increasing interest and personnel in clinical oncology.The field since my editorship has grown at an even greater pace in cancer-related basic science, and the fallout from that has begun with a panoply of new targeted agents, many of which have already been approved in the US Food and Drug Administration.The key publications that contributed to the acceptance often appeared in JCO for such antibodies against CD20, CD52, Her-2/ neu, epidermal growth factor receptor, and the vascular endothelial growth factor, to name a few.It is clear that there is a new