Cancer Chemotherapy: Challenges for the Future : Proceedings of the Seventh Nagoya International Symposium on Cancer Treatment, Nagoya, Japa

In the past six volumes of the proceedings of this symposium, many problems of cancer chemotherapy have been reported and discussed from the viewpoint of clinical and basic studies. At this symposium the main topics were new strategies for cancer therapy based on biology and pharmacology. Over 500 oncologists attended this meeting. In addition to the keynote address, presentations on the biology of tumour progression and regression covered the molecular basis of cancer suppression by the human tumour suppressor genes, mutation of the p53 gene and accumulation of the p53 protein, tumour suppressor genes involved in the pathogenesis of lung cancer and lessons learned from studies on tumour suppression by chromosome transfer. Many new reports on oncogenes provided the highlights for those chemotherapists present. For cancer therapy based on pharmacology, papers were presented on drug resistance such as P-glycoprotein (p170) multidrug resistance (MDR) transporter limitations on successful therapy for childhood tumours: possible circumvention of MDR by cyclosporin A, regulation of the MDR gene in response to environmental stimuli, and dose-intensive chemotherapies. On the subject of cancer therapies, lung cancer was the focus of attention, and the efficacy of combined modalities was reported and discussed. This publication should provide new concepts and important information for developing cancer chemotherapy to many oncologists working in both clinical and basic research.