Speaker: G. Paolo Dotto, MD, PhD Dept. of Biochemistry, University of Lausanne Cutaneous Biology Research Center, Harvard Dermatology Department and Massachusetts General Hospital International Cancer Prevention Institute, Lausanne
Presentation
Organizers: IRB Barcelona
Date: Thursday 14 June 2018, 12.00h
Place: Aula Fèlix Serratosa, Parc Científic de Barcelona, Spain
Host: Dr. Salvador Aznar Benitah
Abstract
The vast majority of epithelial cancers is limited to in situ lesions that, for internal organs like breast, prostate or lung, can remain undetected for the whole life of an individual. The reason(s) why only a minor fraction of these lesions progresses into malignancy is not understood. In fact, many if not most of genetic changes found in invasive and metastatic tumors can be already present in pre-malignant lesions, raising the question of whether such changes are of primary causative significance or merely permissive for later cancer-spreading events.
Changes in tumor stroma are most frequently viewed as secondary to changes in the epithelium. However, recent evidence indicates that they may play a primary role. Such a possibility would help explain not only dormancy of most epithelial cancers, but also field cancerization, a condition of major clinical significance linked with multifocal and recurrent tumors and broader tissue changes beyond areas of tumor development that expand over time. We will present our recent progress in this area, with specific focus on the role of the CSL protein – the key effector of Notch signaling – in a multistep process of cancer associated fibroblast (CAF) activation and cancer/stromal cell expansion.
Oncology Programme Seminar