Symposium reports 



63. 



T.J.KING, ed. 1974. DEVELOPMENTAL ASPECTS OF CARCINOGENESIS AND 



IMMUNITY 



Academic Press, New York, etc. XVI,218 pp., 73 figs., 25 tabs., subject index. $ 8.95, 

 £4.35 



The 32nd Symposium of the Society for Developmental Biology was held in June, 

 1973. Contributions were presented by fourteen leading specialists, twelve from the 

 U.S.A., one from England, and one from Australia. Collectively they show how important 

 recent advances in both cancer research and immunology are (or can be in the future) for 

 advancing our insight into fundamental processes of development. 



The contributions are reviews or mixtures of review and recent original material, and 

 most of the authors have made an effort to bring out the relevance of their subject for 

 developmental biology (particularly the problem of the differentiated state). The four- 

 teen contributions are arranged in five sessions: Multipotentiality of the tumorous state; 

 Cell proliferation, differentiation and neoplasia; Cell surface changes; Transformation of 

 cells in culture; and Immunity and oncogenesis. The cell types involved in the work 

 reported are usually human or mammalian cell lines but include such things as plant 

 tumour cells and teratocarcinomas. There are some interesting speculations on transla- 

 tional control of neoplasia and on the role of reverse transcriptase. 



64. 



K. S. MOGHISSI, ed. 1974. BIRTH DEFECTS AND FETAL DEVELOPMENT: endo- 

 crine and metabolic factors 

 Thomas, Springfield. Xll,334 pp., 94 figs., 45 tabs., author and subject indexes. $ 24.50 



This symposium was held in Detroit in November, 1971. Consequently it is probably 

 partly out of date at the time this review is printed. The book is of most interest to 

 pediatricians and bio-medical researchers, but some contributions are certainly of interest 

 to mammalian embryologists. 



Most of these are found in Sections One and Two: MetaboUc and nutritional factors 

 affecting fetal growth and development (5 papers), and Endocrine and environmental 

 factors (5). Of these ten papers, half are longer reviews and the rest shorter research 

 reports. Of the reviews we mention one by Villee on endocrine regulation of pregnancy 

 and fetal development, one by Jost (Paris) on mechanisms of normal and abnormal sex 

 differentiation in the fetus, and one by Gardner (now in Oxford, England) on micro- 

 surgical approaches to the study of early mammalian development. Section Three is 

 entitled Recognition, prevention and management of birth defects. 



The book is well produced but the photographic illustrations are not too well 

 reproduced. Some figures surprisingly lack captions. 



65. 



W. NAKAHARA, T. ONO, T. SUGIMURA, and H. SUGANO, eds. 1974. DIFFER- 

 ENTIATION AND CONTROL OF MALIGNANCY OF TUMOR CELLS 

 University Park Press, Baltimore, etc. XX, 554 pp., 250 figs., 150 tabs. $39.50, £ 18.00 



The relationship between differentiation and cancer has been formulated in two ways: 

 cancer is a disorder of differentiation, or oncogenesis is blocked ontogenesis. The recent 

 advances in the molecular and cell biology of cultured cells have shown that the problems 

 in the two areas are remarkably similar. Therefore, this symposium volume is of consider- 

 able interest to developmental biologists. The symposium was held in Tokyo in 1973 and 

 had as participants 1 1 renowned specialists from Japan, 12 from the U.S.A., and 7 from 

 Western Europe. The level of the papers is remarkably uniform, and they are well edited. 

 They all summarize or review very recent research by the authors and others, much of it 



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