The Nature Conferences and Geoffrey Cancer Research Center co-organized 2 international scientific conferences held in the Zuckerman Research Auditorium at MSK. The meetings aimed to bring together researchers with diverse perspectives on the basic and translational cancer research to focus on timely issues in a specific field. We hope to stimulate dialog on recent progress and challenges in various areas of basic and translational research as well as how current knowledge may be exploited in the clinic. In addition to the plenary sessions, there will be poster sessions and a few short talks selected from the abstracts that will allow trainees to present their work.
March 3-6, 2019
The Tumour Cell: Plasticity, Progression and Therapy
Sponsors: Ross Levine, Dana Pe’er, Scott Lowe
Abstract: The conference aims to bring together tumour plasticity, evolution, heterogeneity and inputs from the tumour environment from initiation to progression and therapy. Sessions are themed from a single cell perspective, and include single-cell technologies but conceptually cover cell interactions and adaptation to tumour-cell intrinsic and extrinsic inputs (e.g. to stress, metabolic changes, TME and the immune system, therapy etc.), and also cover genome integrity, epigenetics etc.
March 12-15, 2016
Cancer as an evolving and systemic disease
Sponsors: Johanna Joyce, Ross Levine, Scott Lowe, Charles Sawyers
Abstract: This conference aims to highlight and discuss the intimate connection between the dual qualities of cancer as an evolving and a systemic disease, the development and progression of which relies on a complex interplay of cancer-cell-intrinsic properties with the local and systemic tumour environment. The accumulation of oncogenic alterations in a cancer-originating cell may set the course to malignancy, but tumour cells continue to change and evolve in order to survive, grow, and metastasize. Beyond cancer-cell autonomous properties such as genetic and epigenetic changes, this involves complex interactions of tumours with local stromal components such as extracellular matrix molecules and non-tumour cells, and effects of tumour-derived factors at distant locations to influence immune responses, mobilize cell types that foster tumour growth, and establish metastasis-permissive environments. Tumour burden has additional adverse effects at an organismal level, including conditions such as cachexia and paraneoplastic syndrome. This conference will bring together researchers with diverse perspectives on the evolving and systemic aspects of cancer, to discuss recent progress and challenges in understanding how these features of tumour development are integrated and influence each other, and how current knowledge may be exploited in the clinic.