Author Description

Today, acute leukemia, malignant lymphoma and several other cancers are regarded as curable diseases. As a result, the last 10 years has seen remarkable progress in early diagnosis and treatment of a range of cancers. Treatment is based mainly on chemotherapeutic schedules that include combinations of new agents. The past five volumes of proceedings of the Nagoya International Symposia on Cancer Treatment have covered progress in these agents and their clinical applications. The main topic of this volume is minimal residual disease. Early detection and treatment of minimal residual disease during complete remission of acute leukemia, lymphona, and solid tumors after surgical treatment are the most important problems to overcome in obtaining cure. Even in advanced cancer, cure by treatment is dependent on a reduction in the numbers of cancer cells. Minimal residual cells are eradicated by chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgical treatment. Further, progress in immunological and biochemical fields has enabled detection of minimal residual cells using monoclonal antibodies, in vitro DNA amplification of the immunoglobulin hypervariable sequences, and polymerase chain reactions.