IMO Workshop 11: Steering Evolution/Extinction

Welcome to the registration page for the 11th Integrated Mathematical Oncology (IMO) workshop at the Moffitt Cancer Center. Now in its 11th year we are fully supported by the Moffitt Cancer Center of Excellece for Evolutionary Therapy (CoE). The IMO workshop is designed to motivate and facilitate a hands-on modeling experience focused on Steering cancer evolution through therpauetic intervention.  The workshop is comprised of both an educational event and competition and divides participants into multiple teams combining clinical, experimental and theoretical members. These teams integrate their energies to develop and implement a mathematical model focussed on facilitating treatment strategies that will either control or cure a range of different cancers. The teams are expected to come up with a model, solve it and give a presentation all within 4.5 intense days.

As always we will have several independent judges to view both the specific aims and the closing presentations to decide the winning team. To facilitate integration and motivate participation we are offering an Amazon gift voucher to active participants of the winning team and to the runner up team. In addition, to facilitate further development of the winning project we are offering a $50K pilot grant (generously funded by Moffitt Cancer Center) to the leaders of the winning team.

As with last years workshop there will be a "speed dating for scientists" to break the ice among diverse group of participants on the 29th. The opening presentation on the 30th will summarise what is expected of the teams and serve to motivate the subsequent hands on model development sessions. We plan to have an seperate poster session on the evening of the 30th to allow participants to showcase their own research. Participation in the workshop requires registration in order to generate the teams and give numbers for the food and beverages we are providing throughout the workshop. 

We are offering deluxe travel awards for external participation!!! Each award will cover flight + accommodation + meals for up to 6 nights and allow for both national and international scientists to participate in this unique hands on educational event. If you are either a PhD student, Postdoctoral student or junioir faculty with a passion for research and a desire to better understand the role of cancer evolution in shaping therapuetic strategies as well as how to build integrated models then please apply during the registration process. Please note: the travel awards are extremely limited and will be offered on a competitive basis, application does not gaurantee participation. If you are able to cover your own expenses, please indicate this during the registration process.

Please note

TRAVEL AWARD APPLICATIONS WILL BE CLOSING ON MONDAY 30th of September 2019 at Noon EST. AWARD WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED before the 4th of October 2019.

What

Moffitt Cancer Center under the auspices of the Center for Evolutionary Therapy has been developing evolutionary therpaies with the goal of control or cure. Recent clinical trials in a number of cancers have shown the significant impact of neoadjuvant therapies on clinical outcome. Specifically, by giving a traditional adjuvant therapy in the neoadjuvant setting (e.g. Immunotherapy) has led to extended progression free survival and in some cases cure. This raises the possibility that by sequencing and combining drugs in a smarter, evolutionary informed, manner can lead to complete eradication of the cancer i.e. tumor extinction. A major open question is how best to steer and evolving cancer therapuetically? This motivates many more questions: (i) Which drug should be given 1st? (ii) When should the next drug be added or switched to? (iii) When can we stop treament overall; (iv) Which drugs are best given in combination versus in sequence; (v) Should dosing be modulated or treatment holidays be implemented or both; (vi) Should we aim for control or extinction from the start and can we change this choice during therapy? (vii) How should toxicity impact these decisions? Therefore the ambitious focus of this year's workshop is to try, in under week, come up with novel therapuetic strategies, across a number of cancers, with the explicit goal of steering evolution toward extinction or control.

When

Sunday, 6PM, 29th October 2023 - Friday 2PM, 3rd November 2023. 

Where

Speed dating: SRB Atrium, 6PM 29th October.

Intoductory presentation: SRB Murphey, 9AM 30th October.

Poster session: TBD, 7PM 30th October.

Working group sessions: Various rooms, 30th October -  2nd November.

Closing presentations: SRB Murphey, 9AM 3rd November.

Chair and contact

The IMO Workshop is chaired and organized by the IMO Department Chair, Sandy Anderson. For more information concerning participation or about the workshop in general please contact IMO Department Asisstant Danae Paris directly at Danae Paris.

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