Cell News 02/2018
16
Meeting report – Cancer challenged by physics: Why meet?
The 8th Annual Symposium Physics of Cancer, October 4th to 6th, 2017
Before going into details of last years’ symposium, let's first step
back and have a look at where and how far we have gotten. This
is something we want to do because - as the legendary German
soccer coach Herberger said: after the game is before the game -
the next symposium is scheduled and the program is set.
Why do we care to go through all that trouble involved in orga-
nizing an international meeting, every year, for over nearly a de-
cade now? For the older ones of us (JK, HH), who have organized
many different types of meetings during our careers, we routinely
have to justify why we organize yet another conference, hearing
such standard remarks as: “There are too many meetings, and I
generally only attend special meetings of my field.” In the case of
Physics of Cancer, we admittedly have a rather general title, so
how can we still successfully continue the series? Firstly, though
the title sounds rather generic, the individual contributions go into
very much into detail. For instance, physicists - like always - love
to present the latest state-of–the–art methods at the nano-scale,
cell biologists present the frontiers of light microscopy applied
to cells, cell groups and tissues, and the medical community
continues onwards to the medical manifestations of these issues
with tumor-relevant questions. The interdisciplinary merging of
concepts over time, as mirrored in this conference, proved to be
one of the hallmarks of the field, i.e. the field of biophysics is
continually developing fast and strongly. Secondly, as teachers we
witness how quickly new, young scientists enter the field. Hence,
when the first meeting was planned in 2009, the PhD students
of today had not even finished high school. Therefore, besides
generating a platform for all kinds of scientists who do research
on cancer, with a strong bias for the physical and biomechanical
perspective, we have a strong commitment to educate and bring
the new generation of researchers to the frontiers of experimental
science in this field. For the very reason, this meeting was devel-
oped in close association with and is also funded by the graduate
school "Leipzig School of Natural Sciences - Building with Mole-
cules and Nano-objects (BuildMoNa)". Additionally, the German
Research Foundation (DFG) provides essential support, and, as one
of the reasons for this report, the German Society for Cell Biology
(DGZ) has supported us from the 3rd symposium onwards. Several
reports such as this one have appeared in the DGZ's publication
Cell News and will once again be found on the website home
page. In addition, the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) has
financially supported the Physics of Cancer symposium from 2014
to 2016.
The original concept for the conference, as stated on the website
of the first meeting in 2010 (
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events/buildmona/), is still valid, although with the caveat that we
now see even more clearly that the biomechanical properties of
tumors and individual tumor cells are central to tumorigenesis.
“The investigation of changes in physical, i.e. material, proper-
ties of cells during progression of cancer is an emerging field
in physics redefining medical physics, which has been predom-
inately a service to clinicians (imaging, radiation, etc) and now
redefines itself based on material science. During malignant
transformation of cells, changes in their cytoskeleton, e.g. down
regulation of actin and up regulation of intermediate filaments
such as vimentin, occur. This leads to significant changes in tumor
cells’ viscoelastic properties, which are prerequisites for high cell
proliferation and tumor invasion. Additionally, the expression of
adhesion receptors such as E-cadherins decreases, which chang-
es cell motility due to less binding sites with adjacent cells, and
alters surface tensions that stabilize compartment boundaries
between different cell types. The high proliferation, invasiveness,
and metastasis typical for tumor cells are greatly hindered without
these changes in a cell’s material properties. Thus, the knowledge
of these physical properties provides a powerful tool to determine
the aggressiveness of a tumor and ultimately these findings may
result in new therapies that stop the progression of cancer. These
results illustrate that materials science can shed new light on
tumor progression. The minisymposium will gather the pioneering
groups world-wide that are concerned with the physics of cancer.
This meeting will have a defining impact on a newly emerging
scientific field.”
The first meeting had a two-day schedule with 11 speakers that
has now expanded to a format of three with 21 invited speak-
ers, 8 speakers selected from contributed abstracts and a series
of informal social events to connect the participants with each
other. Over the years, the topics slightly expanded in scope, with
MEETING REPORT
Josef Käs opening the symposium.
