| Scientific
Organizers
Josef
A. Käs & Mareike
Zink
Soft Matter Physics Division, University of Leipzig
Press release by the University of Leipzig
(German language)
Registration
No registration is required. Feel free to participate in the symposium.
Only doctoral candidates of the graduate school "BuildMoNa" have to
pre-register for the conference in order to take it as a modul for their
scientific training. Deadline is October 17, 2010. Please use the
registration
form on the BuildMoNa website.
Weblinks
Webmaster: Steve
Pawlizak
Last update: 2010-10-16 |
The investigation of changes in physical, i.e. material, properties of
cells during progression of cancer is an emerging field in physics redefining
medical physics, which has been predominately 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 changes cell motility due to less binding sites with adjacent
cells and alters surface tensions that stabilize compartment boundaries
between different cell types. The for tumor cells typical high proliferation,
invasiveness, and metastasis 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 world-wide the pioneering groups that are concerned with the physics
of cancer. These meeting will have a defining impact on a newly emerging
scientific field.
The minisymposium “Physics of Cancer” aims towards bringing together
the most important investigators in this field. Nature has expressed an
interest to cover the meeting with a short report. Since the big “C”-word
is always of public interest we have asked minister von Schorlemer (SMWK)
to open the meeting.
This meeting is funded by the graduate school "Leipzig School of
Natural Sciences - Building with Molecules and Nano-objects (BuildMoNa)".
A limited number of BuildMoNa doctoral candidates may take this conference
as a BuildMoNa modul for their scientific training.
Invited Speakers & Abstracts
Prof. Dr. Robert Austin
Prof. Dr. Francoise Brochart-Wyard
Prof. Dr. Roland Eils
Prof. Dr. Ben Fabry
Prof. Dr. Ramsey Foty
Prof. Dr. med. Peter Friedl
Prof. Dr. Harald Herrmann
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. med. Michael
Höckel
Prof. Dr. Jaques Prost
Prof. Dr. Josef A. Käs
Conference Schedule
The schedule for the conference can be downloaded here.
Venue
The minisymposium
will take place at the new seminar building (Seminargebäude, room
420) of the University of Leipzig, Germany.
University of Leipzig, Seminargebäude, Universitätsstraße
1, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Room 420
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