) The New York Academy of Sciences will be sponsoring a conference entitled """"""""Anti-Cancer Proteins and Drugs: Structure, Function and Design"""""""" from November 8-10, 1998 in New York City. The Principal Investigator and conference chair is Professor Wen-Hwa Lee (University of Texas Health Science Center). The cochairs are Professor David Lane (University of Dundee, UK), Dr. Hiroshi Maruta (Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research), Dr. Nancy Kohl (Merck), Dr. Chandra Kumar (Schering-Plough), Dr. Bernd Seizinger (Genome Therapeutics) and Dr. Peter Traxler (Novartis). The conference is designed to bring together the leading academic and industrial researchers to discuss the latest developments in research on tumor suppressor genes and anti-cancer drugs. Bringing these two groupings together should advance research in this area significantly. Since the first tumor suppressor gene RB was cloned a decade ago, a number of new tumor suppressor genes such as p53 have been cloned, and the structure-function relationship of the corresponding proteins have been studied extensively. These genes are potentially useful for gene therapy of cancers. In parallel, a number of anti-cancer antibiotics or chemicals have been isolated or created by pharmaceutical companies, universities or other academic research laboratories. These non-peptide molecules are potentially useful for chemotherapy of cancers. However, top scientists working on tumor suppressor genes and on anti-cancer drugs rarely sit together to discuss the therapeutic potential of these discoveries. This meeting will provide us with a rare opportunity to exchange and combine the knowledge accumulated in these two distinct disciplines, in order to design and create much more effective anti-cancer molecules for the treatment of cancers. The proceedings of this meeting will be published as a volume of the Annals of New York Academy of Sciences.
