Rapid Access to Preventive Intervention Development Program in the Division of Cancer Prevention of the U.S. National Cancer Institute: an Overview Available to Purchase

As a 17th century English preacher stated: “Prevention is much better than healing because it saves the labor of being sick” (T. Adams, The Happiness of Church, 1618, p146). The term “chemoprevention” was coined by Sporn and coworkers in the 1970s (1) and articulated through numerous publications ever since. It refers to cancer prevention that aims to disrupt oncogenesis by chemical, biological, or nutritional intervention and thereby prevent, reverse, or delay the development or recurrence of cancer. The importance of prevention in the war against cancer has also been very recently echoed by a prominent cancer researcher, Dr. Vogelstein: “One interpretation of our work is that the proportion of effort and funding devoted to other ways of managing cancer, such as prevention and early detection, should be greatly increased…as they may have much more success in minimizing cancer deaths.”¹