Harvard and French researchers announced last week that they are joining together in a five-year project aimed at improving the detection and treatment of two common forms of cancer.

The new project, which will target colon and liver cancer, will operate out of the Cancer Center at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

The Cancer Center will be joined by the French Association for Cancer Research (FARC), the French equivalent of the American Cancer Society. FARC will be donating the $600,000 needed for the project.

"We feel this agreement coincides with goals stated by our organization and United States cancer officials of dramatically reducing cancer deaths by the year 2000," said FARC President Jacques Crozemarie in a press release issued last week.

"The program will create a broad exchange of people and science," said Dr. Jack R. Wands, one of the directors of the new program and a professor at Harvard Medical School, yesterday.

The researchers selected liver and colon cancer because they are "two major worldwide cancers," said Dr. Kurt J. Isselbacher, the director of the MGH Cancer Center.

"Liver cancer is extremely prevalent in Africa and the Orient, and colon cancer throughout the world," said Isselbacher.

Researchers will try to develop agents, including monoclonal antibodies, which will identify cancerous tumors in the early stages, Wands said.

According to Dr. Robert R. Mayer, oncologist at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, current early detection techniques using monoclonal antibodies are all "limited" because some non-cancerous cells can trigger the same reaction as cancerous ones.

"It is like saying a green light goes on for many different things," he said.

The scientists will also investigate the relationship of the human immune system to cancer, Wands said.

"It is probably not realistic to expect advances that will make the front of Newsweek," said Mayer, adding that the MGH/FACR research would probably lead to gradual improvements in the understanding of cancer.

"There is a whole brave new world out there. How it will affect bedside care isn't known yet," said Mayer.

Wands emphasized the educational value of the cross-cultural research project. The program will include American and French medical students, as well as leading clinicians and researchers, he said.

Dr. Dominique Bellet, clinical researcher and professor at the University of Pharmacology in Paris, and Dr. Mehmet Ozturk, a former fellow of the FACR and currently an assistant professor at the Harvard Medical School, will co-direct the program with Wands.