59. Cold Spring Harbor symposium on quantitative biology: Molecular genetics of cancer

摘要

Investigation of the mechanistic aspects of cancer has its roots in the studies on tumor viruses and their effects on cell proliferation, function, and growth. This outstanding progress was well documented in previous Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology. In the early to mid 1980s, progress on the development of chromosome mapping strategies and the accumulation of DNA probes that identified polymorphisms, encouraged by the international Human Genome Project, enabled the identification of other genes that contributed to familial inheritance of high susceptibility to specific cancers. This approach was very successful and led to a degree of optimism that one aspect of cancer, the multistep genetic process from early neoplasia to metastatic tumors, was beginning to be understood. It therefore seemed appropriate that the 59th Symposium on Quantitative Biology focus attention on the Molecular Genetics of Cancer. The concept was to combine the exciting progress on the identification of new genetic alterations in human tumor cells with studies on the function of the cancer gene products and how they go awry in tumor cells.