| Year | Events |
| 1920 | Dr. Ernest Codman of MGH started the 1st cancer registry for bone sarcoma. He also initiated the 1st Mortality and Morbidity conference in 1924. |
| 1922 | The ACS initiated a Committee on Treatment of Malignant Disease. Later it was re-organized as the Commission on Cancer. |
| 1931 | Dr. Evarts A. Graham performed the 1st successful pneumonectomy for cancer in a 48-year old man who survived for 30-years after the operation. |
| 1935 | Dr. Allen O. Whipple of Columbia University1st performed en-bloc radical duodeno-pancreactomy for cancer of the pancreas. This “Whipple procedure” remains one of the few effective treatments against pancreatic cancer today. |
| 1939 | Drs. Alton Ochsner and Michael DeBakey published their study of “Primary Pulmonary Malignancy” in Surgery Gynecology & Obstetric, marking the 1st time tobacco use was linked with lung cancer. |
| 1947 | Dr. Alexander Brunschwig, trained in Boston, France and Chicago, performed the 1st total pelvic exenteration in New York. He did this complex operation on 22 terminal patients with advanced cancer localized in the central pelvis. |
| 1975 | Dr. Judah Folkman and graduate student Henry Brem discovered angiogenesis in cartilage tissue leading to the development of anti-angiogenic cancer therapy |
| 1975 | Randomized clinical research studies showed that radical mastectomy should no longer be a standard treatment for breast cancer. |
| 1989 | National Cancer Data Base, a joint program of ACS and the American Cancer Society was formed. |