Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Integrating Metabolism and Tumor Biology, organized by Ralph J. DeBerardinis, Robert T. Abraham and Eyal Gottlieb. The meeting will be held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada from January 13-18, 2015. Metabolic reprogramming is a hallmark of cancer. Work in recent years has demonstrated extensive interconnectivity between oncogenic signaling pathways and intermediate metabolism. Compelling evidence indicates that signaling aberrations that drive oncogenesis trigger extensive alterations in metabolic flux; conversely, mutational alterations in certain metabolic enzymes are capable of priming cells for malignancy. These observations have raised hopes that understanding the metabolic underpinnings of cellular transformation, tumor growth and metastasis will result in more effective strategies to diagnose and treat cancer. Current challenges include understanding how best to translate observations from simple models of tumor cell growth to bona fide tumors in vivo, and understanding which aspects of dysregulated cell metabolism contribute to tumor maintenance and progression. This conference will bring together scientists from academia and industry attacking this problem on many levels. A major theme of the meeting will be exploring the crosstalk between metabolism and various other dimensions of systems biology, including epigenetics, protein function, stress responses and signal transduction. Emerging principles regarding the influence of the tumor microenvironment on cellular metabolism will be discussed in detail, as will new progress toward exploiting metabolic reprogramming to image and treat cancer. The meeting will be paired with a meeting on PI 3-Kinase Signaling Pathways in Disease, providing a fertile environment for exchange of ideas between these two highly connected fields.
Despite considerable advances in our understanding of the molecular causes of malignancy, cancer remains the second-leading cause of death in the United States. The field has reached a point where new paradigms will likely only be uncovered by integrating the highest-quality metabolic research with the broader fields of cancer cell signaling and genetics. The Keystone Symposia meeting on Integrating Metabolism and Tumor Biology will review and discuss the most crucial dimensions of cancer metabolism research: the steady stream of discoveries linking cancer metabolism to tumor growth, stress resistance, and therapeutic responses, and with a new generation of drugs in or nearing clinical development to inhibit metabolic pathways in tumors.
