Cancer is a common life-threatening disease. Prevention and
therapy of the disease are the desire of everybody. This paper summarizes our attempt to the tough challenge. Chronologically we began the study of
carcinogenesis, and then turned to the research of
anticancer agents. Identification of food
mutagens was extensively studied. Once they were identified, the mechanism of
nucleic acid modifications by these
mutagens had been studied. The modification study gave information on the
nucleic acid modification by
mitomycin and
bleomycin. The structure-activity relationship study of
phorbol esters and teleocidines whose
tumor promotion is epigenetic, was extensively studied. On the other hand,
retinoic acid, a
vitamin A metabolite, suppresses the epigenetic
tumor promotion. This suggests that an epigenetically active compound rather than a cytotoxic
anticancer agent can be used for
tumor suppression. In the
retinoid research, we found a number of characteristic new active substances which may be of
therapeutic use: some of them are in the clinical trial stages in the field of dermatology and
cancer. During the chemical study of
retinoids, we encountered the
retinoic acid receptor, coded by the
retinoic acid receptor (RAR) gene which had just reported. Further
retinoid research yielded
retinoids antagonists, and then RXR(
retinoic acid-X-receptor)-agonists and RXR-antagonists. These
ligands have a big potential in the
therapy of diabetes and
obesity.