Greeting
President, The 66th Annual Meeting of the Japan Lung Cancer Society
Professor and Chairman, Department of Respiratory Medicine
Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine
The 66th Annual Meeting of the Japan Lung Cancer Society will be held Thursday, November 6 through Saturday, November 8, 2025 at Tokyo International Forum. It will be the first time in 52 years that Juntendo University hosts the conference, the last time being when the late Professor Hiomi Homma was the society's president and spearheaded the 14th Annual Meeting in 1973. While it is a great honor to have this opportunity to serve, I am determined to live up to the expectations that come with this weighty responsibility.
The Japan Lung Cancer Society developed out of the Lung Cancer Research Group, which had been formed in 1960, and took its current name in 1966. In September 2007, the society was restructured into a corporation engaging in specified non-profit activities. It has grown into Japan's largest academic society focused on lung cancer research with more than 7,300 members.
As you may know, the Japan Lung Cancer Society offers a very worthwhile academic community bringing together internists, surgeons, radiologists, pathologists, basic researchers, and medical staff in one forum to discuss with each other directly fundamentals, diagnoses, and treatments for lung cancer and other respiratory tumors.
This year's theme is "A New Era in Lung Cancer: Our Mission." We are witnessing a paradigm shift in the treatment of lung cancer as new diagnostic methods, drug therapies, surgical techniques, and radiation treatments emerge one after the another. Molecular diagnostics, which make use of lung cancer tissue, cytology specimens, and plasma samples, require even closer collaboration with pathologists. Moreover, more and more evidence has emerged that substantiates preoperative and postoperative drug treatments for operable non-small cell lung carcinoma. This has promoted a greater recognition of the importance of multi-disciplinary cooperation. With advances in Patient and Public Involvement (PPI), we, as healthcare practitioners, are called upon to provide the best and most appropriate treatment for patients and their families. In addition, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) need to cooperate to accelerate development of new drugs, novel testing methods, and medical devices in Japan.
To bring these ideas to fruition, it is vital that those of us who diagnose and treat lung cancer reaffirm our mission as we contemplate what we should do for our patients and their families. This is what we had in mind in setting "A New Era in Lung Cancer: Our Mission" as the theme for this year's annual meeting.
The novel coronavirus has been reclassified so that it is now treated as a general infectious disease. Accordingly, this annual meeting will be held entirely on-site to better encourage face-to-face discussion and debate. At the conference venue in Tokyo, we intend to release to the world a variety of evidence supporting methods and treatments as well as statements about our research and work. It is my sincere wish that as many of our members as possible will come to Tokyo and take part in the lively discussions.
I hope to see all of you in Tokyo in November 2025.