Hormonal Carcinogenesis—Future Perspectives

Abstract

In this symposium we have been treated to a smorgasbord of progress in the subject area defined as “hormonal carcinogenesis.” Each speaker, an expert in his field, has presented his most recent achievements and in varying degrees has also laid out his own particular interpretation or perspective as to where we are going from here. It has been an exciting experience—and I am sure that the future will be even more provocative and productive. In fact, with respect to my particular assignment— “Future Perspectives on Hormonal Carcinogenesis” much of the turf has already been covered in the specialized topic areas. However, I shall take it as my responsibility to speak a bit panoramically—providing a cell biological framework that, hopefully, will be useful in interpreting ongoing experiments and making productive choices among the many future directions that are currently possible or are likely to soon arise. In particular, I shall try to point out some areas of cell and molecular biology where new knowledge is greatly needed if we are to reap the ultimate benefits from research in the field of hormonal carcinogenesis—a route to the prevention of these types of cancer or the development of an effective therapy for dealing with the human disease.