Cancer has been recognized as a disease for thousands of years, but investigators only began making significant strides in research to fight it a few centuries ago. In 1775, fireplace soot was linked to cancer in chimney sweeps. Later, other environmental hazards as well as inflammation, heredity and radiation were identified as risk factors. Today, with the decoding of the human genome, cancer research has entered a new era as Cedars-Sinai investigators develop increasingly advanced methods for precision diagnosis and treatment.
