Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Cancer Metastasis: The Role of Metabolism, Immunity and the Microenvironment, organized by Drs. Erika L. Pearce, Sarah-Maria Fendt, Russell G. Jones and Peter F. Carmeliet. The conference will be held in Florence, Italy from March 15-19, 2019. In disease states, immune cells must compete for available resources to control tissue homeostasis or mediate protective functions. This is particularly true in cancer, where rapidly proliferating and metabolically dysregulated tumors exert metabolic pressure on cells within the tumor microenvironment. Understanding how immune and non-immune cells respond to these conditions and restrain tumor growth and metastasis is critical for developing new cancer therapies. Often cancer biologists and immunologists have little crossover, and this presents a significant barrier to furthering knowledge. This interdisciplinary conference brings together immunologists and scientists focusing on cancer to reveal novel and integrated mechanistic underpinnings that lead to cancer progression/regression and metastasis. Our goals are to: Integrate cancer biologists and immunologists who have a common interest in how cellular metabolism influences cell function; raise awareness of the metabolic intersection between tumor biology and immunology; and encourage junior researchers to actively participate at this interface. Attendees will leave the conference with a stronger understanding of how metabolism in immune cells and non-immune cells influence cell function in metastasis and the tumor microenvironment. We hope that researchers from cancer biology and immunology will, as a result of their interactions, forge new collaborations founded in their mutual appreciation that engagement of particular metabolic pathways shapes cell function and fate. Given the resurgence that metabolism has seen in recent years, we think our conference will appeal broadly to many researchers across cancer biology and immunology, many of whom are interested in investigating metabolic changes in their particular systems.
In disease states, immune cells must compete for available resources to control tissue homeostasis or mediate protective functions; this is particularly true in cancer, where rapidly proliferating and metabolically dysregulated tumors exert metabolic pressure on cells within the tumor microenvironment. Often cancer biologists and immunologists have little crossover, and this presents a significant barrier to furthering knowledge. This interdisciplinary conference brings together immunologists and scientists focusing on cancer to reveal novel and integrated mechanistic underpinnings that lead to cancer progression/regression and metastasis.
