1900s

1903   Radium is found effective in the treatment of tumors (Marie and Pierre Curie isolated radium in 1898).

1907   The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is founded.

1910s

1911   Peyton Rous discovers a virus that causes cancer in chickens (Rous sarcoma virus).

1912   Cancer cells are grown in the laboratory, the first long-term "tissue culture."

1913   The first known article on cancer's warning signs is published in a popular women's magazine (Ladies' Home Journal).

A nationwide organization dedicated to public education about cancer is formed (the American Society for the Control of Cancer, which later became the American Cancer Society).

1915   Coal tar gives rabbits cancer in experimental proof of carcinogenesis. The theory that chemicals had cancer-causing potential began with observations more than a century earlier on the high rate of cancer among chimney sweeps.

1920s

1922   The Public Health Service opens a Special Cancer Investigations Laboratory at Harvard Medical School.

1928   George Papanicolaou finds vaginal cell smears (the Pap smear) can reveal the presence of cervical cancer.

1930s

1930   The National Institute of Health is established by the Ransdell Act.

1937   1937 Legislation signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the National Cancer Institute to support research related to the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.

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