CSHL 2025 Conference on Biology of Cancer: Microenvironment and Metastasis

About This Grant

Cancer is now recognized as an abnormal organ where multiple cell types cooperate during cancer initiation and metastatic progression. Enormous progress has been made on identifying genetic, epigenetic and metabolic alterations in tumor cells and characterizing the different cell types composing a tumor, understanding the mechanisms by which these cell types interact with each other, developing ways to image the changes in a tumor and exploring therapeutic opportunities that take into account the non-malignant cells. Thus, there is an emergence of a need for an integrative approach for controlling cancer. However, most cancer meetings are organized to focus on one or two aspects of the many aspects of the biology of tumor. The proposed meeting takes an integrative approach to create a platform and bring together world leaders in different aspects of cancer biology, genetics, epigenetics, metabolism, signaling, immunology, diagnostics, and therapeutics to discuss the latest findings and promote dialogue aimed at solving the chief problems that prevent durable responses in the clinic. We believe that such an integrative approach will trigger discussions and interactions that cross disciplinary borders and find new ways to develop and deliver novel therapeutic strategies for controlling cancer. The eighth rendition of this biennial conference will draw participants from academic labs, research institutes and biotech/pharmaceutical industries, and will include leaders in the field, established investigators, junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and corporate scientists. To ensure the presentation of the most cutting edge results many speakers will be chosen based on the quality of abstracts submitted to the meeting coordinators and session chairs several months prior to the meeting. Our emphasis will be on unpublished results. To maximize broad participation, efforts have been made to include outstanding scientists and scientists from abroad as session chairs and invited speakers. Each session will be chaired by two leading scientists in the field selected by the organizers. Oral presentations will be selected from submitted abstracts by the session chairs in consultation with the organizers. Selected speakers will include graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty aiming for maximal inclusion of young investigators. In addition, to promote recognition of the next generation of scientists, a late breaking session will be assembled with invited early career investigators to discuss exciting advances in cancer biology. Of special importance are the two poster sessions and panel discussion. The poster session provides an opportunity for many participants to present their work in an atmosphere conducive to informal discussion and the panel discussion engages thought leaders and the participants on one highly debated topic on the role played by personalized cancer medicine in improving cancer treatment. The meeting will be of moderate size and we expect about 350 people to attend, the vast majority of whom will be presenting a poster or talk.