Before abiraterone was approved for use in 2011, the prospect of long-term survival for men with advanced prostate cancer was slim. The growth of prostate cancers is driven by male hormones – so when the cancer has spread beyond the prostate capsule and surgical treatments become impossible, the best option is to retard growth by depriving the cancer of its supply of androgens.

Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) was uniformly fatal until the mid-twentieth century. Its transformation into a curable disease is one of the defining achievements of European oncology. This article traces that arc, from Rudolf Virchow’s identification of leukaemia in Berlin in 1845 to the current era of precision medicine.

The European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO) was founded in 1981, alongside the emergence of more conservative strategies in cancer surgery and increasingly positive results from the integration of radiotherapy and chemotherapy in cancer treatment.