Genes & Cancer

The global cancer genomics consortium's third annual symposium: from oncogenomics to cancer care

Luis Costa1,2,*, Sandra Casimiro1, Sudeep Gupta3,*, Stefan Knapp4,*, M. Radhakrishna Pillai5,*, Masakazu Toi6,*, Rajendra Badwe3,*, Maria Carmo-Fonseca1,*, and Rakesh Kumar7,*

1 Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

2 Hospital de Santa Maria – CHLN, Lisbon, Portugal

3 Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, India

4 Structural Genomic Consortium, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

5 Rajiv Gandhi Center for Biotechnology, Kerala, India

6 Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan

7 The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

* Member, The Global Cancer Genomics Consortium, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine, the George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA

Correspondence:

Luis Costa, email:

Keywords: Oncogenomics, Cancer Biomarkers, Cancer Therapy

Received: May 3, 2014 Accepted: May 14, 2014 Published: May 15, 2014

Abstract

The Global Cancer Genomics Consortium (GCGC) is a cohesive network of oncologists, cancer biologists and structural and genomic experts residing in six institutions from Portugal, United Kingdom, Japan, India, and United States. The team is using its combined resources and infrastructures to address carefully selected, shared, burning questions in cancer medicine. The Third Annual Symposium was organized by the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Lisbon Medical School, Lisbon, Portugal, from September 18 to 20, 2013. To highlight the benefits and limitations of recent advances in cancer genomics, the meeting focused on how to better translate our gains in oncogenomics to cancer patients while engaging our younger colleagues in cancer medicine at-large. Over two hundreds participants actively discussed some of the most recent advances in the areas cancer genomics, transcriptomics and cancer system biology and how to best apply such knowledge to cancer therapeutics, biomarkers discovery and drug development, and an essential role played by bio-banking throughout the process. In brief, the GCGC symposium provided a platform for students and translational cancer researchers to share their excitement and worries as we are beginning to translate the gains in oncogenomics to a better cancer patient treatment.


PII: 7