A major conference on cancer opens in Dublin today.
"We are lucky to have been able to attract cancer experts who are at the very cutting edge of cancer care, cancer research and the development of treatments, which will make a massive difference for cancer patients and indeed people threatened with cancer in the coming decades," said the conference organiser, Prof Mark Lawler of St James's and Trinity College.
The challenges of delivering 21st-century medicine to cancer patients will be highlighted, and national and international leaders will review the latest developments in cancer biology, cancer prevention, cancer screening and cancer drug therapy.
"Significant advances are occurring in the physical delivery of radiation to tumours in patients coupled with improvements in imaging," said Prof Kevin Prise of Gray Cancer Institute in Middlesex, Britain.
"Our understanding of the effects of radiation at the cell and tissue level are also changing due to technological advances which allow radiations to be more precisely delivered in experimental models and their effects quantified."
Minister for Health Mary Harney will open the 5th International Cancer Conference in the Shelbourne Hotel, where medics from Ireland, England and the United States will discuss the disease.