BCG

BCG stands for Bacille de Calmette and Guérin and is named after Albert Calmette (1863 - 1933) and Camille Guérin (1872 - 1961), two French scientists who developed BCG as tuberculosis vaccine. They did so by culturing Mycobacterium bovis bacteria for so many generations that it lost its virulence for animals and humans. This had therefore become a safe vaccine to provide to patients. The Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine was first used in 1921 and remains one of the most widely used of all current vaccines world-wide.

Tuberculosis was noted to have an antitumour effect at the start of the 20th century. A lower frequency of cancer in patients with tuberculosis was reported in 1929 and in the 1930s the use of BCG as a cancer therapy was first suggested, but enthusiasm for this did not mount until the 1950s and 1960s. Morales et al. in 1976 carried out the first clinical trial with BCG. They were able to demonstrate a remarkable decrease in the rates of recurrence of superficial bladder cancer in nine patients. A randomised prospective trial by Lamm et al. in 1980 confirmed these earlier observations and showed decreased recurrence rate and increased time to recurrence.

BCG has since become the standard of care in the treatment of bladder cancer world-wide.