For many, the history of Thalidomide is better forgotten: the drug left disastrous teratogenic effects in children from women who took it in the first trimester of pregnancy. The first reports in The Lancet were published in l961, and thalidomide was quickly taken off the market. Quietly, it was still used in some more exotic situations, such as leprosy, and later in graft-versus-host disease, but real interest in thalidomide has been revived only in the last decade. Its antiangiogenic effect was finally exploited as an anticancer drug in the early l990?s; and in some hematological conditions and solid tumors, the results with this agent have been encouraging.
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