Medical Oncology
Outline
The Department of Medical Oncology is a clinical department that was established in the School of Medicine in 2005. The department has kept pace with the developments of the 21st century. Cancer is the leading cause of death in Japan. Medical oncology, or clinical oncology, is a multidisciplinary medical field that specializes in tumor-agnostic treatments, focusing on pharmacotherapeutics. Over the last 20 years, several new drugs have been developed, such as molecularly targeted drugs. Since the discovery of cancer-specific biomarkers, these drugs have become the mainstream medicine for standard drug therapies. More recently, a series of new drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors, which can prevent cancer cells from suppressing the immune system, have become available. These innovative, tumor-agnostic drugs are now proving to be very effective in cancer treatments. Cancer develops due to genetic defects. With the rapid progress in genetic analysis technology using next-generation sequencers, cancer multi-gene panel testing, which can comprehensively analyze multiple cancer-related genes at once, is now covered by insurance. Currently, cancer multi-gene panel testing is clinically applied to personalized medicine in cancer treatment, providing optimal therapeutic drugs for different types of cancer. In the future, it is expected that this technology will be further applied to cancers with unmet medical needs and no cure, including refractory cancers and rare cancers, and will also lead to the development of new biomarkers and therapeutic drugs.
e-mail: cancer@kanazawa-med.ac.jp
Faculty
Professor
Associate Professor
Assistant Professor
Research Achievements
A Multicenter Phase II Study on Atezolizumab plus Bevacizumab Combination Therapy in Patients with Unresectable Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Child-Pugh Classification B Cirrhosis: CHALLENGE Trial Takeshi Terashima, Masafumi Ikeda, Taro Yamashita, Takuji Okusaka, Hiroshi Imaoka, Tomokazu Kawaoka, Satoshi Kobayashi, Sadahisa Ogasawara, Atsushi Hiraoka, Masahito Nakano, Naohiro Okano, Rie Sugimoto, Michihisa Moriguchi, Yoshitaka Inaba, Satoru Shinoda, Makoto Ueno, Masatoshi Kudo, Junji Furuse, Hiroaki Nagano, Liver Cancer,2026 Mar.
Clinical Impact of Recurrence Beyond the Milan Criteria After Curative Resection of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Takeshi Terashima, Hana Sanada, Noboru Takata, Tomoyuki Hayashi, Akihiro Seki, Hidetoshi Nakagawa Tadashi Toyama Shinichi Nakanuma, Isamu Makino, Kazuo Yasumoto, Shintaro Yagi, Taro Yamashita, Hepatology Research, 00:1-11, 2025
Efficacy and safety of FOLFOX for Japanese patients with advanced biliary tract cancer as second-line or later chemotherapy (JON2107-Bstudy) Terashima Takeshi, Morizane Chigusa, Chida Akihiko, Todaka Akiko, Umemoto Kumiko, Kawakami Yujiro, Yamashita Tatsuya, Ueno Makoto, Furuse Junji, Nagano Hiroaki, International Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2025
The efficacy and safety of adding hepatic arterial infusion chemotherapy using cisplatin to lenvatinib for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma Terashima T, Yamamoto M, Toyama T, Kido H, Takata N, Hayashi T, Seki A, Nakagawa H, Nio K, Iida N, Yamada S, Shimakami T, Takatori H, Mizukoshi E, Honda M, Yamashita T, Hepatology Research, 55(7):1026-1037, 2025 Apr.
External Research Funding
2019 Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) Grant-in-Aid. Motoo Y. Research on information, current status, and safety/efficacy of community-based, disease-preventing or health-promoting programs utilizing integrative medicine as social models
2018-2019 Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) Grant-in-Aid (Translational Research Promotion: Seeds A). Yasumoto K. Development of innovative therapies for scirrhous gastric carcinoma with regulation of HGF/MET axis.
2017-2019 Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C). Yasumoto K. Development of innovative targeted therapy by essential control of the HGF/MET axis for scirrhous gastric cancer
2018-2021 Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C). Hisamura K. Research on psychosocial support for middle-aged and elderly patients with cancer who live alone and have no family caregivers
The 2018 second semester home care subsidy of Yuubi Memorial Foundation research grant. Hisamura K. Study on building a community-based support system for appearance changes among cancer survivors.