Log-kill hypothesis (Skipper)

Howard Skipper, Frank Schabel and colleagues showed in mouse leukaemia that a given drug dose killed a fixed fraction of cells regardless of how many were present: first-order kinetics. The corollary is that curing a cancer means driving the count from billions to zero through repeated cycles, that a single surviving cell can regrow the tumour, and that treatment must continue past clinical remission. The hypothesis shaped curative chemotherapy in childhood leukaemia and Hodgkin lymphoma and remains the framework for cycle number, though solid tumours with Gompertzian kinetics and resistant clones follow it only approximately.