New approaches to cancer

[PRESS INVITATION 27 February 2012] For two days in March, some of the world's leading cancer researchers will be meeting in Stockholm to discuss the future of cancer treatment.

A number of new approaches to treat cancer have emerged. They include immunotherapy, in which the tumour cells are eliminated by the body's own immune defence; starving the tumour by inhibiting blood supply; and correcting known defects in the tumour cells with highly specific, targeted drugs that stop unbridled tumour growth.

Routes to improving cancer therapy involve probing the cellular DNA to understand why some cells divide in a dysregulated manner, escape cell death and become tumours. Is it possible to check or influence malignant growth in these tumour cells, that have mutations in critical growth-regulating gene?

Some new therapie are already in clinical use alongside the conventional surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy; others are still at the basic research stage.

Attending the two-day conference will be two dozen of the worlds foremost cancer researchers, who will be talking about the latest results in their particular fields. Several programme items will be dealing with malignant melanoma.

Journalists are invited to "Frontiers in Cancer Research and Therapy" to attend the lectures and interview the researchers involved.

• Thursday 8 and Friday 9 March
• Nobel Forum, Nobels väg 1, Karolinska Institutet Solna campus.

Sample programme items:

• Genomics. The DNA of tumours can be sequenced using powerful new methods. Which genes are mutated in different tumours, and what is the clinical significance?
• Cancer vaccination. New ways of inducing a patients own immune defence to attack a tumour.
• Heterogeneity. How can we attack tumours comprising many different kinds of cell with different mutations in DNA?

View the full programme

• Frontiers in Cancer Research and Therapy

Arrangers: Klas Wiman, Andreas Lundqvist, Ola Larsson, Thierry Soussi and Johan Hansson from the Department of Oncology-Pathology, Karolinska Institutet.

For further information, contact: