Introduction

Over the past decade, our understanding of the molecular defects in cancer have been exploited to develop drugs to inhibit oncogenic signalling. While these are often initially effective, resistance is almost always inevitable in advanced cancers, due to secondary mutations that re-activate the inhibited pathway.

This virtual conference will explore a seemingly paradoxical approach to cancer therapy, based on the deliberate hyper-activation of cancer-relevant signalling pathways. Accumulating evidence suggests that this leads to cell death caused by a further activation of cellular stress responses. 

This conference will focus on ways to hyperactivate oncogenic signalling and how the vulnerabilities associated with this hyper-activated state can be identified. The conference aims to give its audience a fundamentally different perspective on ways to treat cancer.

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Target audience:

Scientists in academia and industry who are interested in a fundamentally and radically different approach to cancer therapy.

Topics to be covered:

• Drugs that activate oncogenic signalling
• Vulnerabilities of cancer cells that experience hyperactivation
• Mechanisms of resistance to hyperactivation drugs
• Finding novel targets for hyperactivation therapy

Scientific Programme Committee:

• Rene Bernards (Chair), NKI, Netherlands
• Kimberly Stegmaier, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, USA
• Bart Vanhaesebroeck, UCL Cancer Institute, UK

Lay summary of the conference topic:

This conference will highlight a radically new approach to cancer therapy that may seem paradoxical at first glance. Rather than focusing on inhibiting the signals that drive cancer, this conference will explore ways to over-stimulate these signals in cancer cells. Emerging evidence that cancer cells can become excessively stressed when over-stimulated to divide, leading to their death. This approach could lead to innovative drugs for cases where more conventional cancer drugs have failed. 

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Image courtesy of Rene Bernards at NKI, Netherlands