Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled New Frontiers in Understanding Tumor Metabolism, organized by Chi Van Dang, Katharine Yen and Navdeep S. Chandel. The meeting will be held in Banff, Alberta, Canada from February 21-26, 2016. This meeting will bring together experts in the field as well as newcomers, who are expected to enrich the conceptual framework for the study of tumor metabolism. Plenary sessions are designed to bring the latest in basic biochemical work in metabolism to biologists, to deliver new findings in oncogenic transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation of metabolism as a basis for further basic biochemical discoveries, and to provide foundational findings that lead to therapeutic applications of tumor metabolism research. These sessions will allow attendees to discuss new discoveries of previously unsuspected metabolic re-wiring in cancer and present current findings in transcriptional and post- transcriptional regulation of tumor metabolism and future challenges. The sessions will also provide an update on opportunities for cancer therapy using knowledge generated from fundamental discoveries. New methods and knowledge will be shared at the meeting, and opportunities for interdisciplinary interactions will be significantly enhanced by the concurrent meeting on Immunometabolism in Immune Function and Inflammatory Disease, which will share a keynote address and plenary session with this meeting. NCI has been at the forefront of NIH Institutes in funding research that propels the field of tumor metabolism forward. More recently, NCI has partnered with the NIH Common Fund to support studies on metabolomics that are relevant to tumor biology and human cancers. Since tumor metabolism as a field is vital to our understanding of cancer initiation and progression, NCI is the most relevant NIH Institute to support this meeting topic. The conference will significantly advance our understanding of tumor metabolism and will help provide the framework for new approaches to cancer prevention, cancer detection, and cancer therapy.
Our understanding of cancer has evolved from early studies of metabolic aberrations in cancers to the identification of genomic alterations in human cancers and the involvement of driver cancer genes in animal models of cancers. While significant advances have been made in target therapies and immunotherapy, how the metabolic profile of a cancer cell makes it vulnerable or resistant to these therapies as well as standard therapy are not well understood. The purpose of the Keystone Symposia meeting on New Frontiers in Understanding Tumor Metabolism is to bring together experts in the field of tumor metabolism with investigators from other disciplines and industry partners to advance our understanding of tumor metabolism and impact the basic science, diagnosis and treatment of cancers.
