Cancer as a Microevolutionary Process

DATE:

6th - 9th March 2011

LOCATION:

Wilton Park, Steyning, West Sussex, UK

ORGANISERS:

Gerard Evan
University of Cambridge, UK

Douglas Green
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, USA

Karen Vousden
Beatson Institute for Cancer Research, Glasgow, UK

It is not so much the inherent mechanistic diversity of cancers that makes them difficult to treat so much as the fact that they are evolving targets. Although they may be initially derived from a clonal progenitor, by the time they are macroscopic tumors comprise heterogeneous cell populations that are divergent both genetically and in acquired status (e.g. signaling, location, history). Unfortunately, most approaches to understanding cancers effectively treat a tumor as a unitary object possessed of a fixed, immutable and uniform set of responses. This workshop will address the process of carcinogenesis using an evolutionary lens: we will discuss what innate (e.g. tissue constraints, tumor suppressors and stress responses) and extrinsic (e.g. therapies) selective pressures shape tumor evolution /in vivo/, how this varies between tumor types, and what insights such a view offer us with respect to cancer biology.