Cancer Grand Challenges Conference: extrachromosomal DNA

ecDNA

ecDNA has emerged as one of the most pressing and challenging problems in cancer. ecDNAs, oncogene-containing circular DNA fragments found outside of chromosomes, play a crucial role in cancer development and progression. ecDNAs allow cancer cells to quickly evolve and adapt to changing environments and treatments, and thus are a significant clinical problem, as major contributors to treatment resistance and poor outcome. Conceptually ecDNA biology is fascinating – sitting at the interface of genetics and epigenetics. ecDNA biology is also vitally relevant - being linked to treatment resistance and poor outcome in patients. Understanding and exploiting ecDNA biology promises to transform the fundamental understanding of cancer and potentially revolutionise its treatment.

Although first observed over 50 years ago, the importance of ecDNA in cancer has only recently come to light, with the field undergoing a revolution, making major leaps towards understanding mechanistically how ecDNAs form and function, how they evolve to resist treatment, how they impact the immune system, and critically how they can be effectively targeted therapeutically.

The conference

This first edition of the Cancer Grand Challenges Conference Series aims to convene researchers from diverse backgrounds, from bench to bedside, across and beyond the ecDNA field, to provide an interdisciplinary forum to stimulate discussion around emerging concepts, open questions, what we need to do to answer them, and the future for this exciting field. The tools, datasets, pioneering technologies, and experimental models have now matured to an extent that the field is ripe for innovation as new investigators enter the field. The purpose of this meeting, in addition to sharing cutting edge science, is to further enhance and build upon an open, collaborative, and inclusive community that will advance the science rapidly for the benefit of patients.

Starting from the basic mechanisms of formation, maintenance and function, touching on transcription, replication and inheritance, and discussing where ecDNAs hijack existing processes and where they’ve put new mechanisms in place. Moving to how ecDNAs are involved in different cancers, and their implications for understanding tumour initiation, progression, evolution and resistance to treatment. The conference will also showcase novel technologies to generate, manipulate and study ecDNAs in human and animal tissues, bioinformatic tools to detect ecDNAs, as well as chemical probes as tools to understand and target ecDNA.

Topics

Topics will include: