[Heredity in clinical cancer].

Familial clustering of cancer causes a problem whether significant differences exist from one person to the next in cancer susceptibility. Such clustering could occur simply by the chance occurrence of common environmental exposure, but in rare families, clustering is caused by discrete genetic factors, some being recessive and some being dominant inheritance with mendelian segregation. In this review article, heritable cancers are listed and discussed. Recent laboratory developments, such as the study on chromosome fragile sites and restriction enzyme-fragment length-polymorphism, to find the predisposition for cancer was introduced. Other analysis for individual difference by the genetic epidemiology was also summarized.