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We would like to announce the US-Japan International Cancer Systems Biology Meeting that will take place from October 28th to 29th, 2009, at the RIKEN Yokohama Institute.
Mission statement Cancer remains a major health problem and is poised to become the number one killer worldwide. Despite many targeted successes in the treatment of cancer, this disease continues to thwart researchers and clinicians. Perhaps the major challenge in the management of cancer is the inherent complexity of the disease. Cancer is a systems disease, arising from the interplay and interaction of various "systems" or scales of molecular and cellular events within the host and the environment. Many current treatments have focused on a specific gene or protein without taking into account the complex interactions both in tumor development and subsequent response to treatment. Not only does this approach yield limited success but equally frustrating is the lack of a rationale for why a therapy was unsuccessful. The knowledge needed to understand and manage cancer can only be gleaned from understanding these systems. Systems biology is a field that approaches basic biological understanding from a holistic (rather than reductionist) perspective integrating the complex interactions occurring within and across various biological hierarchies for a more comprehensive understanding of the biological system or disease. In cancer systems biology, this means examining the various molecular and cellular changes that occur within a tumor and the appropriate environment. Great advances have been made in this approach due to the innovations in high-throughput molecular and cellular characterization and various computational and analysis techniques. Cancer systems biology holds the only hope for fully understanding and therefore preventing and treating the disease. Despite the great promise and progress of the field, as an emerging approach, there are many challenges and opportunities. The goal of this workshop is to identify and address many of those issues. First, it will be a forum for the exchange of current state-of-the-art research in cancer systems biology. Second, it will identify various challenges and barriers that currently exist hampering the further advancement and translation of the field. Lastly, it will identify specific programs and areas where there are opportunities for interactions or leveraging across various labs, institutions, and funding agencies. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Last modified: 2009-07-28 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||