by ecancer reporter: Clare Sansom

The National Cancer Research Institute organises a wide-ranging conference of basic and cancer research each autumn.

This year it is being held at the splendid BT Convention Centre in Liverpool from 4-7 November. It began with a short introduction by NCRI chair Dame Janet Holland, setting the scene and highlighting innovations including a new collaboration with the Royal College of Radiologists. Dame Janet's introduction was followed by three fascinating plenary lectures.

Joan Massague of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York gave the first talk, entitled “Metastasis seeds and niches”.

This highlighted an important and little understood stage in metastasis: how the disseminated tumour cells from which metastases form survive and thrive in different tissues. Using breast cancer as an example, his group identified several genes involved in tumour cell survival and cell seeding, including the chemokine CXCL1; combining chemotherapy with a CXCL1 inhibitor might help prevent recurrence, He has also discovered that a tumour micro-environment with similar properties to a distant tissue (such as bone) can pre-select clones of cancer cells that are able to thrive in that environment

The second talk was to have been given by Neal Rosen, also from Sloan Kettering, but he was unable to leave his storm-hit New York home. His place was ably taken by Owen Sansom of the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, Scotland. Sansom's group uses mouse models to explore the driver mutations in colon cancer.

About 90% of colon cancers carry mutations in APC, and APC loss de-regulates the Wnt and mTOR signalling pathways. Inhibitors of mTOR complex 1, such as rapamycin, have proved disappointing in the clinic; Sansom showed that they cannot be successful unless combined with inhibitors of mTOR complex 2. After this lecture, prepared at only a day's notice, delegates were not surprised to hear Sansom named as a recipient of Cancer Research UK's Future Leaders in Cancer Research award for 2012. He shared this award with Jason Carroll of CRUK's Cambridge Research Institute.

Cancer Research UK's most prestigious award, the Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research prize, was given to Sir David Lane, best known for discovering the tumour suppressor gene P53 termed the “Guardian of the Genome”.

His wide-ranging plenary concluded the first conference session on a high note. It included a whistle-stop tour of a career spanning three continents: Lane now leads the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore. Turning to research, he described promising attempts to target “undruggable” proteins such as p53 and cyclin E that function via protein-protein interactions. His group is modifying peptides that bind to these proteins by “stapling” them into rigid forms with covalent bonds; these modified peptides have some drug-like properties and are not cleaved by proteases.