Zubrod, an alumnus of the Georgetown Preparatory School (class of 1932), the College of the Holy Cross (class of 1936), and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons (1940 class), served in the U.S. army medical corps during World War II, where he worked on a replacement for quinine in the treatment of malaria. The unit eventually discovered chloroquine.

In 1946 he commenced work at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, and was appointed assistant professor of medicine and director of research at Saint Louis University in 1953. This position lasted briefly: he became clinical director of the National Institutes of Health in 1954 and became head of the Division of Cancer Treatment of the National Cancer Institute in 1956 and scientific director in 1961. Here, he put an emphasis on the development of new chemotherapy agents and their use in clinical trials. He is credited with the introduction of the platinum-containing compounds (e.g. cisplatin). Several other new classes of chemotherapeutics were identified under Zubrod's leadership.

Zubrod's name is also connected to a widely used assessment scale for performance of cancer patients, the Performance Status of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) for Patients with Cancer (Zubrod scale).

Zubrod left the NCI in 1974, and became a professor and chair of the department of oncology at the University of Miami School of Medicine (now the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine) and served at the director of the Florida Comprehensive Cancer Center. He retired from this position in 1990.

• History of cancer chemotherapy
• Performance status

• Frei III E. In Memoriam C. Gordon Zubrod MD. J Clin Oncol 1999;17:1331-3.
• A tribute to Dr. Charles Gordon Zubrod: January 22, 1914 - January 19, 1999. Miami, Fla.: University of Miami, 1999.

• Sugarbaker, Everett V; Ketcham, Alfred S; Zubrod, C Gordon. Interdisciplinary cancer therapy : adjuvant therapy. Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1977.
• Zubrod, C Gordon. Perspectives in cancer. In: Clinical Cancer Seminar (1975: Miami, Fla.). Hormones and Cancer. New York: Stratton Intercontinental Medical Book Corp., 1976.

• Zubrod, CG.Historic milestones in curative chemotherapy. Semin Oncol. 1979 Dec;6(4):490-505. PMID 394331
• Zubrod CG, Selawry O. The treatment of lung cancer. Adv Intern Med. 1978;23:451-67. PMID 204171
• Zubrod CG. Present status of cancer chemotherapy. Life Sci. 1974 Mar 1;14(5):809-18. PMID 4597493
• Zubrod CG. Trends in chemotherapy research. Proc Can Cancer Conf. 1969;8:31-9. PMID 4893428
• Zubrod CG. The skin and antitumor drugs. Arch Dermatol. 1967 Nov;96(5):560-4. PMID 4861428

• Columbia University obituary
• College of the Holy Cross obituary