The advent of high quality imaging and high throughput gene expression profiling and sequencing technologies is transforming medical practice. Within ten years, in addition to standard pathological, radiological and immune-histochemical analysis of tumor specimens, cancer diagnosis in the near future will routinely include a comparison of the genome of the patient with the genome of their tumors. This information, combined with high quality imaging identification of biomarkers and the analysis of RNA and metabolite levels from normal and tumor tissue will allow pathologists and clinicians to develop individualized therapy regimens specifically targeted towards pathways dysregulated in the tumor, which is expected to have a significant and positive impact on treatment efficacy. Indeed, local researchers from the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Rutgers University are already joining hands to use these new technologies to develop novel biomarkers for accurate diagnosis and risk analysis of tumor patients as well as identifying pathways that can be targeted for novel therapeutics and improved patient care.
The availability of the high quality molecular and genomic data has created a new field, called systems biology, which is dedicated to the development and application of quantitative methods to biological phenomena. Systems biology has brought researchers from many diverse fields, such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, statistics, engineering and computer science into biology. These researchers work with traditional molecular biologists and geneticists to apply analytical techniques to understand biological phenomena at all scales, from information hierarchies that regulate cellular function to genotype phenotype relationships to adaptation and co-evolution of host-pathogen systems. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together faculty, post-docs and graduate students who work in these areas at the Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Rutgers University to discuss their current research, and develop ideas for collaborative research. The target audience of the workshop are all area researchers interested in working across disciplines to create a new understanding of biological phenomena, by a synthesis of ideas and methods from analytical and computational techniques with traditional in-vitro and in-vivo biological experimental methods.
Organizers: Konstantin Mischaikow, Anirvan Sengupta and Gyan Bhanot, Rutgers University
Registration: There is no formal registration process or registration fee. However, in lieu of registration, please send an email to gyanbhanot@gmail.com by December 3, 2011. Registered participants will be provided with a continental breakfast, lunch and coffee/cookies at the breaks.
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