Revealing the intricacies of cancer 英文参考文献.docVIP

/2002/3/6/reports/4015.1 Meeting report Revealing the intricacies of cancer Anne M Verhagen* and Peter Lock? Addresses: *The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Post Office Royal Melbourne Hospital, Victoria 3050, Australia. ?The Department of Surgery, The University of Melbourne, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Victoria 3050, Australia. Correspondence: Anne M Verhagen. E-mail: verhagen@.au Published: 13 May 2002 GenomeBiology 2002, 3(6):reports4015.1–4015.5 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2002/3/6/reports/4015 ? BioMed Central Ltd (Print ISSN 1465-6906; Online ISSN 1465-6914) importance of establishing the exact p53 status of the tumor A report on the 14th Lorne Cancer Conference, Lorne, before considering p53-based tumor therapies was empha- Victoria, Australia, 14-17 February 2002. sized several times at the conference, however. For example, high levels of mutant p53 in cancerous cells could impede the function of introduced wild-type p53 protein, if the mutant The ‘guardian of the genome’, the p53 protein, a key regulator of cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, featured prominently at this year’s Lorne Cancer Conference. The plenary seminar was presented by David Lane (University of Dundee, UK), whose research has been central to the transformation of p53 from being considered a weak oncogene to its now clearly demonstrated role as a powerful tumor suppressor. There were also several reports on pathways mediated by another tumor suppressor, the retinoblastoma protein (pRb) as well as updates on an ever-increasing array of proteins and signaling pathways implicated in cancer. We learned of several animal models for cancer and how they may be used to screen for as-yet unidentified oncogenes or tumor sup- pressors; and we heard about attempts to develop cancer vaccines, p53-targeted tumor therapy, and the use o