EMBO Workshop — Persistent cancer cell: Molecular mechanisms, dynamic models towards therapy

The most important factor that limits the success of anti-cancer therapy is the emergence of drug resistance. At a time where we seem to have reached a limit in terms of genetic mutation driven-treatment efficacy in multiple cancer types, i.e. with a best overall survival around 30-36 months in melanoma but still more than one third of deaths after two years, there is an urgent international need for innovative strategies to combat the resistance. The milestone discovery of drug-tolerant cancer persistent cells suggests that drug resistance might derive from genetically similar clones. Indeed, advances during the past decade show that persistent cancer cells are the discrete and usually undetected cells that survive cancer drug treatment and constitute a major cause of treatment failure. This workshop will provide a unique opportunity to promote communication among biologists, mathematicians and clinicians, which will enable interdisciplinary discussions and collaborations for this fasting emerging domain. The sessions will start with understanding molecular mechanisms of cancer persistence, and will continue with discovering therapeutic targets of persistent cells, deciphering their heterogeneity at single cell level, learning from the microbial persister world, and modelling of the dynamics of persistent cells.