Tumour Heterogeneity and the Microenvironment Conference

The recent Tumour Microenvironment and Heterogeneity Conference held in Ohio was co-organised by our Dr Trevor Graham, and designed to bring together researchers from three communities:

• Intra-tumour heterogeneity (how DNA mutations within cancer cells vary within a single tumour/patient)
• The tumour microenvironment (all the elements of cancer, in addition to cancer cells themselves e.g. the immune system, blood vessels)
• Mathematical modelling

Representing the former disciplines were our Professors Jude Fitzgibbon and Frances Balkwill. The conference was held at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute from 2^nd-6^th February. The MBI is holding a series of workshops/conferences and this year's theme is cancer.

Dr Graham gives the opening address on
tumour evolution. Image by Sandy Anderson

Dr Graham and his 3 co-organisers designed the programme to bring together these often separate fields to tackle big questions in cancer biology:

"In this multidisciplinary meeting we wanted to create an environment where the different disciplines could come together, share ideas and really accelerate their research; for instance we kept hearing how the genomics people knew the microenvironment was critical to tumour evolution, but just didn't know how to study it.

We wanted people to talk to each other!"

There were both workshops and breakout sessions that encouraged people to actively tackle problem, ignited by statements and questions specifically designed to be controversial, such as:

• There's no such thing as cancer stem cells
• The microenvironment drives tumour evolution
• Personalised medicine need only consider the tumour genome

Dr Graham said, "we hoped they would annoy people" - meaning that these themes were designed not only as ice-breakers, but also tools to expose people's biases and challenge ideas that could be holding us back, in our respective fields.

Prof. Balkwill's presentation covered both the lab-grown tumour project, CANBUILD, and her lab's more recent work on the ovarian cancer microenvironment.

Prof. Fitzgibbon's talk on sequencing cancer cell genomes was well-received, with plenty of tweets picking up on his analogies:

Dr Graham spoke about his work on tumour heterogeneity and evolution - how can we diagnose and treat tumours effectively when they vary so much in themselves?

 Prof. Fitzgibbon summarised:

"Cancer can be distilled down into a simple formula - Genotype + Microenvironment = Cancer - it's common sense, therefore, to bring biologists, mathematicians and modellers together, circle the wagons for a week and leave ones prejudices out side to redefine new boundaries, and maybe that's why we rode the school bus every morning"

The aptly-named conference bus co. "N^th Degree Transportation"

The organisers intend to write up and publish the consensus view from the experts in the field that arose from the meeting.  It will define "The central importance of considering both the tumour and its microenvironment to understand tumour evolution"

You can follow more of the conference proceedings in detail in this Storify filled with informative tweets from delegates (does not require a Twitter account to view).