Cellular Differentiation and Response to Stress: Modeling Cancer Initiation and Progression

The Sedona Workshop was held under the auspices of the Arizona State University Physical Sciences Oncology Center, and was the third in the series of focused workshops on different aspects of cancer. The core focus of this workshop was the differential response of tumor cells to environmental stress. This central issue was approached by three groups: i) experts in the cancer field, ranging from cell biologists to bioinformaticists to pathologists, ii) biologists and bioengineers with expertise in cell differentiation in the context of stem cells and developmental biology, and iii) a cadre of biological modelers, with backgrounds in physics, engineering, and mathematics

The meeting kicked off with a reception on Sunday evening and a plenary lecture by Paul Davies, the Director of the ASU PSOC. Dr Davies’ lecture was provocatively entitled “Where is the epigenome?” and examined the fundamental issues of reductionism and causation in complex biological systems, especially cancer. This lecture set the tone of the workshop, namely to emphasize fundamental issues and question received wisdom in the hope of uncovering rich new directions of research.

Read more at Cancer Insights

Participants

Tim Newman
Arizona State University

Paul Davies
Arizona State University

Thea Tlsty
University of California, San Francisco

Salvatore Torquato
Princeton University

David Schaffer
University of California, Berkeley

Charles Little
University of Kansas Medical Center

Paul Kulesa
Stowers Institute

Rod Smallwood
University of Sheffield- UK

Alexander Anderson
Moffitt Institute

Michael Barrett
Translational Genomics Research Institute

Beverly Emerson
Salk Institute

Yosef Yardin
Weizman Institute

Nastaran Kuhn
National Cancer Institute

Roger Johnson
Arizona State University

Hal Berman
Toronto General Hospital

Jeff Trent
Translational Genomics Research Institute

Luis Cisneros
University of Arizona