The 46th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy will be held at Tokyo International Forum. For me and Toranomon hospital, this will be a re-challenge of the 42nd Annual Meeting, which was scheduled to be held in March 2020. With my transfer, my colleagues from my old hospital, Hamanomachi hospital, will join me in organizing this conference. I would like to create a conference with a taste of the best of both Tokyo and Fukuoka. My thoughts on this conference and the poster "Rising Venus" are the same as they were four years ago. The following is a reprint, but I hope you will take the time to read it once again.

During the past 2 decades, 2 huge walls standing before us in transplant field have gone.
Firstly, elderly patients or those with comorbidities, formerly considered as ineligible, can now be transplant candidates due to the introduction of mini or non-myeloablative transplant. Secondary, due to the expansion of public BM/PB and CB banks, and innovation in transplant using HLA-mismatched donors, almost all transplant candidates can now have appropriate donors at right time. In addition, novel drugs other than transplant, such as molecular targeted agents, or cellular immunotherapy, have also been increasing rapidly these days.
However, we should realize that the outcome of patients with hematological diseases has never been satisfactory. Patients are still scared of life threatening events during the course of the treatment. They and their family have to make a huge sacrifice socially as well as financially to receive treatment when they themselves are still in the middle of the confusion. They may face and have to endure worse outcomes (accompanying physicians as well). We, transplant staffs, need to stand beside the patients in tough situation and to find out the way for them to go better, when extremely heavy responsibility for life is on our shoulders. This meeting should be the place where staffs in transplant get together, share their experiences (goods and bads), and stimulate each other. I hope this meeting will be fruitful for many of the participants so that they can apply better ways to their patients.

The poster for the meeting, “Rising Venus”, was made by a photographer and my old friend, Mr. Koshu Endo. The Venus shining in the night sky looks to me as if the ray of light leading us toward the right direction after long struggle in finding solutions for patients.