ABSTRACT

Professor Antoine Lacassagne (1) stated a vision for the prevention of breast cancer at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Boston in 1936.

“If one accepts the consideration of adenocarcinoma of the breast as the consequence of a special hereditary sensibility to the proliferative actions of oestrone, one is led to imagine a therapeutic preventative for subjects predisposed by their heredity to this cancer. It would consist – perhaps in the very near future when the knowledge and use of hormones will be better understood – in the suitable use of a hormone antagonistic or excretory, to prevent the stagnation of oestrone in the ducts of the breast.”