CO-CHAIRPERSONS:
George D. Demetri, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA
William S. Dalton, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, Tampa, FL
Susan Band Horwitz, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY
Joseph R. Nevins, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC
The AACR Conference on Translational Cancer Medicine 2010 (USA) was the fifth in the AACR conference series on Translational Cancer Medicine and the second to be held in the United States. Translational research is a key programmatic priority of the AACR, and this meeting showcased the latest scientific discoveries from the laboratory and their clinical applications.
Translational cancer medicine happens at the interface between the lab and the clinic. It transitions basic science breakthroughs to the practice of medicine and uses clinical outcome to feed back into basic research. In order to make any advances in translational cancer medicine there must be open lines of communication between researchers and clinicians. Ten plenary sessions were presented at this conference on such high priority topics as target identification and validation, companion diagnostics, rational strategies for combination therapy, genomics and genetics in clinical practice, clinical trial design, new models for cancer and cancer biology, new indications for old drugs, novel therapeutic platforms, circulating tumor cells, and resistance. The conference attracted a great number of early-career investigators through organized lunches, where early-career investigators sat down in small groups with senior scientists, and the popular dedicated session of oral presentations from proffered abstracts.