This conference aims to highlight and discuss the intimate connection between the dual qualities of cancer as an evolving and a systemic disease, the development and progression of which relies on a complex interplay of cancer-cell-intrinsic properties with the local and systemic tumour environment.

The accumulation of oncogenic alterations in a cancer-originating cell may set the course to malignancy, but tumour cells continue to change and evolve in order to survive, grow, and metastasise.

Beyond cancer-cell autonomous properties such as genetic and epigenetic changes, this involves complex interactions of tumours with local stromal components such as extracellular matrix molecules and non-tumour cells, and effects of tumour-derived factors at distant locations to influence immune responses, mobilise cell types that foster tumour growth, and establish metastasis-permissive environments.

Tumour burden has additional adverse effects at an organismal level, including conditions such as cachexia and paraneoplastic syndrome.

This conference will bring together researchers with diverse perspectives on the evolving and systemic aspects of cancer, to discuss recent progress and challenges in understanding how these features of tumour development are integrated and influence each other, and how current knowledge may be exploited in the clinic.