✍ Scribed by Michael P. Link; John Stevens; Stephen H. Friend; Mark A. Israel; Alfred G. Knudson; Paul M. Sondel
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
During the past 10 to 15 years, there has been an explosion in new knowledge emerging from laboratory investigations of the biology of cancer. The key advances have resulted from the study of pediatric malignancies. As a result, we are on the threshold of developing novel clinical modalities that will benefit both pediatric and adult cancer patients.
Advances from the laboratory have had an impact at various stages of care of the child with cancer. Diagnostic reagents have emerged from research laboratories that have facilitated diagnosis. Undifferentiated, and thus undiagnosable childhood malignancies have yielded to the application of these reagents so that most tumors are now correctly classified and disease-specific therapy can be administered. In many diseases, such diagnostic reagents and testing have allowed for subclassification of patients at diagnosis according to risk of recurrence, enabling them to be assigned to an appropriate intensive therapy to maximize the chance of cure while minimizing acute and late toxicities of therapy. Recently, the availability of the techniques of immunology and molecular biology has increased the sensitivity of tests for detecting occult minimal residual disease, raising the hope that therapy may be more appropriately tailored to the individual patient and his or her response to therapy.
The impact of laboratory investigations on clinical care is demonstrable best in studies of childhood acute
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Over 110 participants attended Plenary Sessions covering An Introduction to Cytometry (B. Mayall, Chairman), Hematologic Applications (B. Bull), Erythrocyte Analysis (B. Bull and D. Ross), Oncologic Applications (P. Horan, Session I; B. Barlogie, Session 11), Cellular Markers and Immunologic Applica