Cancer is above all a heritable disorder of somatic cells and gene expression, but environment is also involved in its origin. Hereditary kidney cancer should prove valuable to understand the mechanisms of disease and to the development of therapeutic measures. Recently, scientists have succeeded in cloning and identifying the genes responsible for the following familial kidney cancers: von Hippel-Lindau disease, papillary renal cell carcinoma, tuberous sclerosis and Wilms tumor (all autosomal dominant). This book brings together some of the most recent advances made with respect to kidney cancers: Leading investigators present recent results on VHL, MET, TSC1 and TSC2 and WT1 genes, among others, as well as on environmentally induced kidney cancers (caused by long-term hemodialysis or induced chemically) and their treatments (surgery and gene therapy), providing an excellent survey of this field. This publication will be of interest to both researchers and clinicians concerned with cancer of the kidney.
