IMO Workshop 12: Toxicity

Welcome to the registration page for the 12th Integrated Mathematical Oncology (IMO) workshop at the Moffitt Cancer Center. Now in its 12th year we are supported by our recent grant from the Cancer Systems Biology Consortium (CSBC) ont the Delta Ecology of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer and the Moffitt Cancer Center of Excellence for Evolutionary Therapy (CoE). The IMO workshop is designed to motivate and facilitate a hands-on modeling experience focused on understanding and reducing treatment toxicity. 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 treatment toxicity to facilite treatment discussions across a range of 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 summarize what is expected of the teams and serve to motivate the subsequent hands on model development sessions. We plan to have a separate 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 junior faculty with a passion for research and a desire to better understand the role of cancer evolution in shaping therapeutic 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 guarantee 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 the 30th of September 2024 at noon EST. AWARD WINNERS WILL BE CONTACTED before the 7th of October 2024.

What

Moffitt Cancer Center under the auspices of the Center for Evolutionary Therapy has been developing evolutionary therapies with the goal to control the cancer. Across multiple clinical trials this has led to a significant decrease in the amount of time patients are on treatment. As a result treatment driven toxicity has signingicantly decreased. Currently most cancer treatments only react to toxicicty effects and are consistencly given at the maximum tolerable dose.

Mathematical models of cancer treament rarely consider toxicity effects and if they do its often through surrogates such as cummulative drug dose. Toxicity impacts many normal homeostatic processes and can be especially harmful to a patients immune system and have long terms impact on heart health, brain health and even drive the immergence of secondary cancers.

A question we hope the teams will tackle is how to best balance toxicity and efficacy for treatment of an evolving cancer ? This motivates many more questions:

(i) How should toxicity be modelled?

(ii) Are drug holidays or drug sequences better for toxicity control?

(iii) How long do toxcicity effects persist for a given treatment?

(iv) Which drugs are the least toxic, would dose reduction help?

Therefore, the ambitious focus of this year's workshop is to try, in under week, to come up with novel therapuetic strategies, across a number of cancers, with the explicit goal of reducing toxicity but maintaining efficacy.

When

Sunday, 6PM, 3rd November 2024 - Friday 2PM, 8th November 2024.

Where

Speed dating: SRB Atrium, 6PM 3rd November.

Intoductory presentation: SRB Murphey, 9AM 4th November.

Poster session: TBD, 7PM 4th November.

Working group sessions: Various rooms, 4th November - 7th November.

Closing presentations: SRB Murphey, 9AM 8th 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 Assistant Danae Paris directly at Danae Paris.

Host or Publisher Integrated Mathematical Oncology