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This book really ought to be read on vacation, just for enjoyment. Granted, cancer is, literally, a deadly serious matter, and cancer research is primarily a part of medicine with Hippocrates in its back ground. Yet, cancer research is also natural science, and as such it yields the joys and sorrows of any science. The cancer problem is also a brain teaser, a challenge for the curious. This introductory report on experimental cancer research is there fore directed to curious students of many disciplines: naturally to medical students, but also to chemists and physicists who have an interest in biological phenomena; biology students will surely en counter pr9blems peculiar to their field in what is supposedly a medi cal one. We have attempted to write without assumptions to a certain degree, for a chemist is essentially in over his head in medicine, and a physician has only the slightest idea of the chemical problems im portant in cancer research. We had no intention of giving a complete view of the field, and from the large number of different lines of development we have chosen only a few. Chemotherapy, as an ex ample, has been treated quite cursorily, along with RNA tumor viruses, although it is possible that just these subjects are especially important for human tumors. Tumor induction via radiation could only be mentioned in passing, in spite of its great practical significance; similarly the role of hormones was only intimated.
List of contents
The impetus for experimental cancer research.- A first step: elucidation of tar cancer.- Aromatic amines: activation through metabolism.- A closer look at chemical carcinogenesis: quantitative aspects.- Multiple step hypothesis of chemical carcinogenesis.- Host factors in tumor induction.- Tissue-specific growth regulation ("chalones").- Carcinogenesis and cell organelles.- The mitochondria and Warburg's cancer theory.- Tumor immunology: basics of a host-specific tumor defense.- Natural history of some tumor viruses.- DNA tumor viruses in tissue culture.- Genetics and cancer.- DNA and carcinogenesis.- A few models for tumor chemotherapy.- Dogmas of tumor induction.- Tumor theories in dialogue.- Summary: a program for a computer.- Appendix: morphological glossary.- Reference works.
