Immunotherapy of Cancer: An Innovative Treatment Comes of Age

Book Preface

Preparation of this book started in October 2013, when the 51st Annual Meeting of the Japan Society of Clinical Oncology (JSCO) was held in Kyoto, Japan. When the editorship was offered to me, I thought, Why me? I was too inexperienced to complete such a great book, with so many Japanese experts in this field. However, I decided to take on the challenge of producing the book with much help from my dedicated older and younger colleagues. Here, I want to express my sincere thanks to all the authors who contributed.

This book contains the history, current status, and future perspective of cancer immunotherapy. The reader may understand easily, I hope, what you should know about the immune system when you treat a cancer patient. Immunotherapy has now come of age as the fourth modality of cancer treatment. Its role in cancer treatment, I believe, will grow day by day, and a future revolution in cancer treatment will occur as all the other treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, may exist with and for the success of cancer immunotherapy.

About 30 years ago, when I was still a young surgeon, I was absorbed in research for tumor immunology. My Ph.D. thesis was titled “An Analysis of Suppressor Factor Receptors on Peripheral Blood Lymphocyte Surfaces of Cancer Patients”. My esteemed professors had thought in those days that there could be no success in cancer immunotherapy without modulation of immunosuppressive mechanisms. Now, they do seem to have been right! I dedicate this book to my two most important professors, the late Takao Hattori and the late Tetsuya Toge. I also dedicate this book to all my sincere researchers who helped me to develop in this field.

Kurashiki, Japan Yoshiyuki Yamaguchi