Einstein Researchers to Lead Three Symposia at Major Cancer Research Meeting

March 30, 2012 — (BRONX, NY) — Three leading cancer researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have been selected to chair symposia at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, which will be held in Chicago from March 31 to April 4.

(L to R): John Condeelis, Ph.D., Jeffrey Pollard, Ph.D., Matthew Gamble, Ph.D.The major symposium, "Immune Cell Function and Cancer In Vivo: Visualizing Friends and Foes," will be led by John Condeelis, Ph.D., professor and co-chair of anatomy and structural biology, co-director of the Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center, director of the program in tumor microenvironment in the Albert Einstein Cancer Center, and holder of the Judith and Burton P. Resnick Chair in Translational Research at Einstein. In this symposium, scheduled for Tuesday, April 3, researchers will highlight innovative imaging technologies – ranging from single-cell detection capabilities to rapid whole-body imaging –  for studying how cancer cells evade, interact with, and mimic immune cells in order to grow and spread.

A second major symposium, "Modulating Antitumor Responses by Stromal Cells and Innate Immunity," will be chaired by Jeffrey Pollard, Ph.D., professor of developmental and molecular biology and of obstetrics & gynecology and women’s health. He also holds the Louis Goldstein Swan Chair in Women's Cancer Research and is the deputy director of the Albert Einstein Cancer Center. The symposium, held on Wednesday, April 4, will focus on the tumor microenvironment – a complex ecology of malignant and normal cells that evolves to support tumor cells during their progression to malignancy – and how to manipulate it to suppress cancer growth.

On Monday, April 2, Matthew Gamble, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular pharmacology, will chair a mini-symposium on "Transcription Factors as Drivers and Therapeutic Targets in Cancer."

Ten other Einstein researchers will make presentations at the AACR annual meeting. The presenters are:

• Evripidis Gavathiotis, Ph.D.: "Cell Death Mechanisms"
• Antonia Patsialou, Ph.D., Yarong Wang, M.S., Juan Lin, Ph.D., Sumanta Goswami, Ph.D., Paraic Kenny, Ph.D., and Dr. Condeelis: "Metastasis Drivers"
• Bin-Zhi Qian, Ph.D., Takanori Kitamura, Ph.D., and Dr. Pollard: "Critical Regulators of the Tumor Microenvironment"
• Dr. Gavathiotis and Denis Reyna, B.Sc.: "Identifying New Anti-Cancer Drug Targets"
• Thomas Rohan, M.D., Ph.D.: "Cancer Risk, Immunity and Inflammation"