Various Cancer Therapies in Japan

Hideo Nakajima

《中華民國癌症醫學會雜誌》 23卷S期 (2007/10) Pp. 18-23

https://doi.org/10.6588/JCOS.2007.23.S.5

並列摘要

Although the recent remarkable progress has been made in cancer therapy, many cancers, especially solid cancers, are still difficult to cure by conventional therapies such as radiation, surgery and chemotherapy. This creates the need to improve the treatment. Immunotherapy and hyperthermia would be expected as the forth and fifth modality of cancer treatment.
Here, in this report, the recent advance and the current status of immunotherapy and hyperthermia in Japan are focused. In immunotherapy, monoclonal antibody therapy and cytokine therapy are successful and widespread nowadays. They have become a part of standard cancer treatment in Japan. In contrast, other types of immunotherapy, such as cancer vaccines, Dendritic cell based immunotherapy or T cell based immunotherapy remain experimental. As a part of hyperthermia, tumor ablation using radiofrequency energy (RFA) is often used for the treatment of various cancers such as hepatoma in Japan. Another locoregional hyperthermia using Thermotoron became popular in 1990's in Japan, and has been almost always used with other forms of cancer therapy, such as radiation therapy and chemotherapy. But in these days, this type of thermotherapy is getting less popular and carried out in the limited number of facilities in Japan. Therefore a number of challenges must be overcome before hyperthermia can be considered as a standard treatment for cancer.