[Molecular targeted cancer therapy and genetic tests --chairman's introductory remarks].

Genetic tests for individualized cancer therapy are now expanding their repertoire as pharmacogenomics biomarkers, coupled with advances in molecular targeted therapy. These tests were considered special in the 1990s, because they were almost entirely limited to hematopoietic tumors and other rare tumors. Molecular targeted therapy has been applied to common solid tumors as well as hematopoietic tumors in the first decade of the 21st century, leading to a breakthrough in genetic tests. In this symposium, recent advances in genetic tests for molecular targeted therapy are being presented on breast cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer and hematopoietic tumors by 4 speakers.