100 years of cancer research in japan

摘要

On the occasion of this special section dedicated to cancer research in Japan, we would like to briefly summarize 100 years of cancer research in our country. We have focused on our contributions to chemical and viral carcinogenesis, cancer-related genes, DNA repair genes, immune-related genes, and anticancer drugs.Japan pioneered cancer research in the 1910s. Filterable virus of chicken transplantable sarcoma was reported by A. Fujinami (Fig. 1) in 1913 in the Japanese literature and in 1914 in a German publication (11). In 1915, K. Yamagiwa (Fig. 1) and K. Ichikawa successfully induced the first experimental cancer by repeatedly painting tar onto the skin of rabbit ears (Fig. 2) (1). After publication of these twp studies, cancer research came to be a scientific tradition in Japan (see Tables).