In Moonshots at Cancer, medical historian Carsten Timmermann traces oncology research at Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche between the 1950s and 2010. The book is based on extensive research at the company’s Basel archives and was published by Roche’s own Editiones Roche. Timmermann’s aim is to write the company’s history of cancer research as a case study for the wider evolution of industry research on cancer treatments.
Moonshots is divided into four parts with 48 mostly chronologically ordered chapters. After a brief pre-history of cancer surgery and radiotherapy in the Introduction, Part One examines the unsystematic origins of modern chemotherapy at Roche. The company...(Oxford University Press review)