Emil Freireich

Emil Freireich at MD Anderson was a pioneering cancer researcher who helped develop combination chemotherapy for childhood ALL — demonstrating that using multiple drugs simultaneously could cure children with leukemia that was previously uniformly fatal. His work on VAMP (vincristine, amethopterin, 6-mercaptopurine, prednisone) combination therapy established the principle of combination chemotherapy and the concept that cancer could be cured with drugs. Childhood ALL now has >90% cure rates, largely building on his foundational work.