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I am pleased to announce that the 40th Sapporo International Cancer Symposium will be held at Hotel Royton Sapporo, Sapporo, Japan for three days from June 23rd (Thursday) to June 25th (Saturday) 2022. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we will have a hybrid meeting with both on-site and virtual meetings.

Sapporo International Cancer Symposium was established in 1981 and has been successfully operated by Prof. Hiroshi Kobayashi, President of the Sapporo Cancer Seminar Foundation. The symposium has been held every summer in Sapporo, has achieved great success, and is now recognized as one of the most prestigious international symposia held in Japan in the biomedical field.

The main theme of the 40th Sapporo International Cancer Symposium is "Tumor heterogeneity: From genomic evolution to drug resistance." Notably, cancer was originally recognized as a malignant neoplasia, which is a unique tissue that autonomously develops, grows, and survives. Cancer was then shown to be derived from a single precursor cell and attributed to a mutation in a single gene. However, reductionism of cancer to its individual elements in a classical analytical manner cannot provide a complete understanding of cancer or effective therapeutic strategies to finally overcome this disease. In contrast, thanks to recent advances, including next-generation sequencing, single-cell analysis as well as information sciences and technologies targeting whole cancer tissues, our understanding of cancer, particularly the spatiotemporal evolution in cancer and the surrounding microenvironment, has drastically expanded.

Several leading scientists from the fields of genomic evolution, tumor heterogeneity/plasticity, immunological heterogeneity, technological advances, and clinical aspects of cancer are invited to the symposium. I am confident that this symposium will provide an overview of a wide range of current research on cancer heterogeneity and provide new and growing concepts and strategies to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer by integrating the outcomes from both basic research and clinical challenges.

Furthermore, the symposium provides an ideal opportunity in which renowned researchers, leading scientists, young postdocs, and students come together to share and discuss recent topics in various dynamic fields of cancer research. The symposium is seeking contributors to participate in this exciting meeting during the best season in Sapporo, which is known as one of the cleanest and most sacred cities in Japan.

On behalf of the organizing committee, I highly anticipate your participation and greatly appreciate your valuable contribution to the presentations and discussions at the symposium.

Yoshinori Murakami, M.D., Ph.D. Chair of the 40th Sapporo International Cancer Symposium Professor Division of Molecular Pathology The Institute of Medical Science The University of Tokyo, Japan