The addition of chemotherapy as an effective means to treat cancer has had a major impact on selected human malignancies. Due to a general inability to dif ferentiate between normal and neoplastic cells, little selectivity exists in currently used oncolytic drugs. Consequently, significant toxicity to the patient is expected when systemic cancer chemotherapy is chosen as an appropriate therapeutic in tervention. Much of this toxicity, such as damage to the bone marrow, gastroin testinal tract, or hair follicles, is predictable based upon the fact that anticancer drugs kill actively dividing...

The idea for convening a Fourth International Symposium on Platinum Coordination Complexes in Cancer Chemotherapy was born in an assembly of researchers from the Vermont Regional Cancer Center and the Norris Cotton Cancer Center who shared a common interest in metal complexes. It was agreed by those assembled that sufficient time had passed since the Third International Symposium on Platinum Coor dination Complexes in Cancer Chemotherapy held in 1976 at the Wadley Institutes of Molecular Medicine in Dallas, Texas, during which several advances in the chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology and...