Workshop

This workshop is co-sponsored by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and SRI International. We will again focus on the application of mathematical and computational tools to understand the properties of cancer and other biological systems. It is recognized that many biological processes cannot be understood by studying individual components. Instead, it is the interactions between these components that define the properties of the system. The past thirty years has seen the identification of dozens of processes and hundreds of genes or proteins that become disregulated during cancer development. While certain types of cancers share common properties, each cancer is a unique genetic disease where mutations in many components and pathways interact. A systems based approach has the greatest chance of determining the system malfunctions that cause each individual's disease and of identifying effective treatments. This workshop is designed to encourage and support the mathematical community's involvement in the effort to study cancer using system approaches. Conference presenters will include mathematicians and computer scientists presently involved in systems approaches to cancer and more general fields of biology. These presenters will cover general approaches to systems biology including analysis of genome scale data as well as statistical, continuous, and hybrid methods for pathway modeling. The workshop will also provide tutorials covering the use of tools and methods in systems biology as well as on the fundamental biological processes involved in cancer. In addition, the workshop will provide travel support for students and postdocs from the mathematical sciences to foster interest in this field. From a biological perspective, the workshop will capitalize on work being performed by Investigators at LBNL, SRI, and UCSF who study the signaling networks associated with breast cancer. The program is developing high throughput assays to characterize these cell lines and examine how they respond to manipulations of key genes. Assays include mRNA expression profiling, measurements of protein abundance, and phenotypic responses using high content screening microscopy. Data and models from this program will be shared at this workshop (prior to publication) for examination and analysis by the participants. It is hoped that participants become engaged in these problems for the long term and that the LBNL led effort will continue to provide data and models for analysis in the future. LBNL even intends to allow its experimental infrastructure to be used to test hypotheses generated by meeting participants in future years. Previous participants are strongly encouraged to attend again, and should notify the conference organizers if they have work that utilizes data from the Integrative Cancer Biology Program that may be of general interest. A block of rooms has been reserved at the Rose Garden Inn. Reservations may be made by calling 1-800-992-9005 OR directly on their website. Click on "Groups" on the bottom of the page and enter the appropriate group code CGMSBC (this code is not case sensitive) into box labeled: "I am an Attendee" - this will open up a window showing all of the group information. You will proceed from there. The cut-off date for reservations is October 1, 2007.