Molecular Mechanisms and their Clinical Application in Malignancies is a collection of manuscripts presented at the 12th Annual Bristol-Myers Squibb Symposium on Cancer Research, held in Toronto, Canada on September 26-27, 1989. This symposium reviews the current understanding of the mechanisms of malignant transformation and the application of several technologies to the diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment of malignancies. This book is divided into 14 chapters. The opening chapters deal with the genetic basis of neoplasia and the molecular biology of oncogenes, the regulation of transcription, and the rearrangement of T- and B-cell genes during development and in malignancies. The subsequent chapters focus on the genetic abnormalities detected in specific tumors, such as retinoblastoma, colorectal carcinoma, and lung cancer. These chapters also examine the retinoid and thyroid hormone receptors. Other chapters explore the genetic basis of the cellular response to therapy, drug resistance, cachectin-tumor necrosis factor in the biology of disease, acute myelogenous leukemia, and the stages in tumor progression. The final chapters look into the application of molecular biology to clinical treatment in the form of receptor specific intoxication on tumor cells, the molecular genetic analysis of the phakomycoses, and the structural design of antitumor compounds. This book will prove useful to oncologists, molecular biologists, clinicians, and researchers.
