Development and Progression

The Gordon Research Conference (GRC), focused on Hormone-Dependent Cancers: Development and Progression will be held on July 28th-August 2nd, 2013 at Bryant College in Rhode Island. Developing means to prevent and treat hormone-dependent cancers is of critical importance, give the significant impact these malignancies have on human health. Recent evidence suggests that hormones influence a large number of heretofore unappreciated processes associated with cancer development, including not only cell signaling and transcriptional regulation, but also aggressive tumor phenotypes (e.g. tumor cell dissemination, stem cell function, response to chemotherapy and DNA damaging agents, tumor metastasis, and alterations of the tumor microenvironment). It is also now clear that the role of hormones extends far beyond breast and prostate cancer, and that a multitude of both peptide and steroid hormones have a major impact on human malignancies not previously known to be hormone sensitive.

A thorough understanding of hormone action in regulating these cellular processes and cancer phenotypes is essential for the advancing understanding of hormone action in the most basic sense, translating these new findings into potential nodes for novel treatment strategies, and for coupling existing hormone associated therapies to new treatments. Toward this end, the 2013 GRC is designed to maximize interaction between the basic science test, investigators with expertise in chromatin regulation, transcription control, cell signaling, translational scientists with expertise in modeling human disease, and physician scientists who stand at the forefront of improving treatment for hormone dependent malignancies. The goal of the 2013 GRC will be to provide a format for this necessary interaction and fruitful exchange of scientific ideas common to overlapping research fields, such that novel concepts emerge, scientific collaborations are formed, and new translational opportunities are revealed.