There is no field of medicine in which advances in therapy have been so closely linked to a better understanding of molecular medicine than in the area of hematologic malignancies. For example, recent insights into the understanding of Epstein-Barr virus have led to new treatment options for patients with posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorders, as discussed in the chapter by Dr. Richard Ambinder et al. Similarly, Drs. Slack and Gallagher discuss the explosion of recent information regarding the molecular pathogenesis of acute promyelocytic leukemia. This particular morphologic subtype...

In recent years, there have been major advances in the treatment of patients with gynecologic malignancies. Perhaps the biggest advances have been in the area of ovarian cancer. Gynecologic Oncology focuses primarily upon this malignancy.
This volume discusses cytoreductive surgery; screening for ovarian cancer; chemotherapy; new chemotherapeutic drugs; the controversy regarding the role of high-dose chemotherapy in gynecologic cancers; the hereditary basis for gynecologic malignancies; molecular genetics; molecular biology and new biologic therapies.
Other topics covered...

Infection is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with neoplastic disease because of compromised host defenses. These defects result in an increased risk of infection and its complications. The nature of the underlying malignancy, the immunodeficiencies associated with it, and the treatments directed against it are all important determinants of infection. In recent years, the introduction of more intensive chemotherapeutic regimes and the widespread use of bone marrow and peripheral stem cell transplantation have changed the pattern of infection in many patients. Furthermore,...

The purpose of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Advances in Pediatric Oncology for the Cancer Treatment and Research Series is to provide an up-to-date summary of how recent advances in cancer research are being applied to the care of children with solid tumors. The interface of cancer research with clinical practice in pediatric oncology has never been more intimate than today. While researchers are identifying oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes and are studying their specific functions, clinicians are using knowledge of oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes for diagnosing cancer in children, for...

Recent advances in radiation oncology have depended upon and are intertwined with subsequent scientific discoveries and the development of new techniques in the fields of radiation and molecular biology, physics, electrical engineering, surgery, and medical oncology.
This volume describes how some of the recent discoveries in the radiological sciences have influenced the way radiation oncology is practised. As there are many advances in this field, the Editors have chosen to concentrate on selected topics in clinical radiotherapy, radiation physics and biology, and technical innovations...

This volume, Biological and Hormonal Therapies of Cancer, which is part of the series Cancer Treatment and Research, presents selected new information concerning biologic and hormonal therapy of cancer. We have attempted to provide the reader with topics of major interest in a timely fashion. There is renewed interest in biologic therapy of cancer. Two chapters review the role of interferon in the hematologic malignancies and in solid tumors. Vaccine therapies have come to the forefront of cancer therapy re cently, and two chapters approach different strategies of vaccine therapies; one...

Andrew Arnold The past several years have been a time of intense excitement and have brought major advances in the understanding and treatment of endocrine neoplasms. This is therefore an excellent point at which to undertake a broad based overview of the state of the art in endocrine neoplasia for the Cancer Treatment and Research series. Because of the wide and interdisciplinary readership of this series, our aim for each chapter has been to provide ample background for those not highly familiar with the topic, while emphasizing the most recent advances. Furthermore, the chapters have been...

Peritoneal carcinomatosis dominates the clinical picture of many patients with gastrointestinal, gynecological and urological cancers. For many of them its dev astating effects contribute directly to their death. Most clinicians consider peritoneal carcinomatosis an incurable metastatic disease and give palliative treatment, re stricted to limited surgery and systemic chemotherapy. Contrary to this view, Paul Sugarbaker and his collegues base their approach on the concept that peritoneal carcinomatosis represents regional tumor spread, similar in its impact on treatment and prognosis to that...

Infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) is known to be associated with an increased risk of neoplastic disorders, especially Kaposi's sarcoma and aggressive B-cell lymphoma for the former, and T-cell lymphoma for the latter. The information obtained from the study of these infections has led to remarkable advances in our understanding of the immune system, as well as the biology of human neoplasms. The management of malignant diseases in such patients also poses substantial challenges to clinicians. This book provides an...

The first edition of Oncogenes (1989) focused on several of the better known transforming mechanisms and surveyed a spectrum of solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. Several of the nearly 50 known oncogenes most relevant to human disease were examined. In contrast, this volume presents a very different profile and balance of subject material that reflects the rapidly changing field of molecular oncology and its newly emerging concepts. Among the most important discoveries of the past 4 years are the identification of nearly a dozen different tumor suppressor genes and the finding of an...