In 1946, Sidney Farber had a grand idea. You can probably guess that he did something pretty important since the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard bears his name. Dr. Farber was a pathologist with a keen interest in childhood leukemia. He was intrigued by leukemia because it was the one cancer that he was able to monitor closely through blood draws. He reasoned that since a certain type of anemia (later known to be caused by B12 deficiency) could be corrected with folates (folic acid), then maybe leukemia could be corrected with folate supplements.
Unfortunately, his theory was completely wrong and instead of slowing the leukemia down, it accelerated its growth. The children became much sicker and died much faster (all children died from leukemia at the time). Undeterred, he paired up with a chemist friend to create a synthetic variant of folic acid. This variant acted as a “decoy” and blocked the action of folic acid. Hence, an “anti-folate” was born. He gave this antifolate to 16 children with leukemia and 10 of them responded, some went into full remission for short periods of time. It had never been done before and when he published his results in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1948, the medical community was outraged and decried him as a liar. Luckily for the thousands of children that came after those first 16, he wasn’t a liar and he had just discovered the first effective chemotherapy for childhood leukemia.
Today we still use antifolates also known as folate antagonists in the treatment of many types of childhood cancer. The most common antifolate used is methotrexate.
The chemist was Subbarao. He discovered role of ATP in a cell and also tetracycline. Lot of his discoveries were stolen by his colleague who claimed them as his own. He was denied tenure by Harvard even after discovering ATP!