Genes critical for development have been implicated in cancer in rabidly increasing numbers. The meeting we intend to have will bring together leading researchers in both cancer and development to facilitate the exchange of information and to promote mutual learning. Areas to be included are cancer progression, telomeres and telomerase, signal transduction pathways, chromatin machines, mouse models of human cancer, transcriptional regulators, extracellular matrix cell cycle and DNA repair, stem cells, and cell cycle. The meeting will include researchers investigating very fundamental areas of developmental biology and those who study cancer with a more clinical perspective, to improve communication between researchers with these types of experience. The meeting is especially timely given the resent explosion of information about the involvement of developmental signal transduction pathways such as EGF, Hedgehog, TGF, and Wnt in many types of human cancer.
