Short description: Evading programmed cell death is a major hallmark of cancer cells and contributes to tumor progression and therapy resistance. Emerging hallmarks such as metabolic plasticity, genomic instability and an immunosuppressive tumor environment allow the tumors to escape from standard cytotoxic as well as targeted therapies. Thus, understanding the underlying mechanisms in appropriate pre-clinical/clinical models is crucial for the design of more effective combination therapies to avoid treatment failure or tumor recurrence.

The EACR Special Conference “A Matter of Life or Death: Mechanisms, Models and Therapeutic Opportunities” is the 5th Conference on this topic. Its objective is to cover recent and exciting developments in the field of cancer research that are crucial to our understanding of the multifaceted role of cell death in tumor initiation, progression and therapy response.

Who should attend? The conference aims at bringing together scientists from different fields of cancer research with an interest in the role of cell death and its deregulation in cancer initiation, malignant progression, and therapy resistance. The conference will also be of interest to scientists exploiting deregulated cell death pathways, or the consequences of therapy-induced cell death for improving treatment outcome. Given its translational character, the conference is of broad interest for basic scientists, medical and clinician scientists as well as representatives from industry. We will provide various opportunities for early stage basic and translational cancer researchers, and young clinicians to present their work to the international community and to meet experts in the field of cell death research in an inspiring informal atmosphere to share research findings, to build their own network and to establish or strengthen collaborations.