Volume 49, Issue 3, March 2019

Clinical trials testing oncolytic virus therapy, a novel anticancer strategy, conducted or currently ongoing in Japan are comprehensively reviewed. Their parental viruses consisted of HSV-1, adenovirus and Sendai virus.

Cooperative groups plays important roles in investigator-initiated clinical trials necessary to progress of chemotherapy. We reviewed active cooperative groups contributing to development of chemotherapy for gastric cancer.

The eighth editions of the primary tumor, lymph node and metastasis classifications were recently published. We review the points of change and discuss problems and future directions when they are adopted in Japanese practice.

CSCs are rare cells, but are responsible for relapse following therapy. In this review, we discuss new technologies for quantifying CSC and new and old treatments that specifically target them.

A simple scoring system for stage III colorectal cancer recurrence (SiS-SCORE) was constructed. This system can predict prognosis and can be an indicator of regimen selection for postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy.

This study showed the contents and the characteristic of problems, goals, and solutions that were reported by participants of PST for cancer patients.

The Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale – Japanese version is valid and reliable.

Our retrospective study showed that extended-field intensity-modulated radiotherapy (EF-IMRT) combined with concurrent chemotherapy was safe and effective for patients who had cervical cancer with para-aortic lymph node metastasis.

We demonstrated poor outcomes following EBRT boost therapy for patients with cervical cancer. FIGO stage IVA and a maximum primary tumor diameter >5 cm were associated with poor prognosis.

The presence of tertiary Gleason grade 5 in radical prostatectomy (RP) specimens is not a significant and independent predictor of biochemical recurrence after robot-assisted RP.

The combination of microvascular invasion and PSA levels before salvage radiation therapy (SRT) may provide a better way to stratify the risk of biochemical recurrence after SRT.

A randomized phase III trial was started on May 2017 to confirm the superiority of post-operative capecitabine and oxaliplatin over observation in patients with curatively resected small bowel adenocarcinoma.