Animal cell technology is a newly growing discipline of cell biology which aims not only to understand structure, function and behavior of differentiated animal cells but also to uncover their ability useful for industrial and medical purpose. The goal of animal cell technology includes clonal expansion of differentiated cells with useful ability, optimization of their culturing in industrial scale, modulation of their ability for production of pharmaceutical proteins and monoclonal antibodies, and newly application to gene therapy and organ culture. The last seven Annual Meetings of the Japanese Association for Animal Cell Technology (JAACT) had attracted increasing number of participants. At the Eighth Meeting (JAACT'95) held in Iizuka from November 6 through 10, 1995. Before this Meeting, we were all shocked by the sudden death of a founder of JAACT, the late Prof. Hiroki Murakami in February of this year. But we had more than 90 participants from outside of Japan and 170 from Japan in this Meeting. The editors express their sincere gratitude to all researchers who joined the meeting, to the organizers of the Symposium Sessions, to members of the organizing committee who dedicated themselves in assuring the Meeting's success in the absence of Prof. H. Murakami, and the graduates and undergraduates students of Kyushu University and Kyushu Institute of Technology who supported management of the Meeting. We also thank the Japanese Bioindustry Association and Fukuoka Science & Technology Foundation for the financial support.
