This application is for partial funding of a conference called """"""""Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics"""""""" to be held under the auspices of the Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) at the DoubleTree Hotel in Ventura, CA, on 20-25 February 2000. This will be the third biennial GRC conference on this topic during a particularly exciting time for many of the subdisciplines in this broad field. At this conference, the attendees (130 maximum) working on selected aspects of cancer research will debate presentations on current topics, critique poster presentations, and develop informal discussions. A major goal of this conference is to foster dialogue among investigator probing genetic and epigenetic processes in cancer development. The meeting will feature nine speaker sessions and daily poster sessions. Poster presentions as well as about six of the speakers will be chosen from submitted abstracts. Therefore, this conference will provide a good forum for younger investigators, as well as internationally renowned senior scientists. In the tradition of this conference series, there will be a heavy emphasis on formal discussion, with 15-20 minutes set aside for debate after each talk and discussion leaders prepared in advance to stimulate questions and comments from participants. This conference will provide a meeting ground for investigators working on cancer susceptibility genes, DNA methylation and imprinting, chromatin alterations, DNA repair, apoptosis, molecular epidemiology, and chemoprevention, and there will be updates on the evolving fields of informatics, genomics and novel technologies. Recent discoveries have uncovered mechanisms linking several of these fields so that cross-talk among investigators may yield synergistic advances. Furthermore, the wide range of investigations to be covered at this conference will span basic studies to molecular epidemiology and chemoprevention.
