[Introduction of molecular biology in respiratory medicine and its perspective]

I reviewed the change of respiratory medicine in the past several decades, overlapping with my own history of medical training and clinical and research works. In the 1950's when I graduated from the medical school and internship, the tuberculosis had been conquered effectively by the development of new antituberculous agents and improvement of nutritional state in Japan. Fibroptic bronchoscopy was introduced in the respiratory medicine in 1968, and computed tomography, in the 1970's, which gave us a good insight into pathological and biological aspects of various lung diseases in vivo. Molecular biology was brought in the respiratory medicine and our laboratory in the last decade, and my colleagues used it for genetic study of hereditary diseases such as alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency and protein C deficiency, biochemical analysis of lung cancer and other pulmonary diseases, rapid detection of microorganisms, and so on. In the next step, gene therapy will come true in the near future, and I hope many intractable diseases such as lung cancer and interstitial pneumonia will be cured by the new technology and scientific knowledge.