New Discoveries and Approaches to the Study of Cell Proliferation, with an Emphasis on Cancers

During the past three decades, significant progress has been made in identifying molecules and receptors that transmit signals to cells to promote cell growth and proliferation, and in identifying critical protein components involved in cell cycle control. Nevertheless, major challenges remain. For example, how complex events such as chromosome replication, telomere maintenance and chromosome separation are monitored and regulated remains poorly understood, as are the processes through which lesions in DNA or chromatin stop the cell cycle, recruit repair machinery, and then re-start the cell cycle once the damage has been repaired. This meeting will focus on recent novel discoveries in which errors in cell cycle control, gene-expression, signal transduction or DNA damage responses promote tumorigenesis, and how those errors can be exploited for improving cancer therapy. Speakers will cover the basics of the cell-cycle and checkpoint control, genome-wide studies of cell proliferation and cancer, genome engineering tools, long noncoding RNAs, epigenetics and ubiquitination/deubiquitination enzymes. Strategies for discovery of drugs or improvement of drug use for cancers and other proliferative disorders will also be covered. Because of the emphasis on novelty, the Chair plans to select as many as half the talks from submitted abstracts, and so invites Principal Investigators and trainees in academia or industry to register and submit the most recent discoveries in their laboratories. The accompanying Gordon Research Seminar is reserved for trainees to network and to give oral presentations and posters in a one day meeting that will be attended by a few senior investigators.