title: Twenty-third annual Pezcoller Symposium: engineering influences in cancer research.
abstract: The cross-disciplinary focus of the meeting highlighted recent progress in physical and genetic analysis and engineering of cancer disease models. As the central theme, mechanical forces affecting cell signaling, growth, differentiation, and metastasis were discussed with emphasis on the tumor microenvironment and cellular immunity, taking into account novel nanotechnology, biosensing, and intravital microscopy tools to monitor animal cancer models and human cancer. Emerging themes were the role of extracellular matrix imposing mechanical mechanisms on tumor cell function, including microenvironmental cues controlling the movement of tumor and immune cells, advanced genetic animal models for cancer that better recapitulate human disease, and preclinical and clinical molecular imaging of tumor architecture and stiffness, as well as novel nanotechnologies for anticancer drug delivery.
authors.affiliation: Nijmegen Centre for Molecular Life Sciences, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Friedl
authors.forename: Jeff
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hubbell
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Livingston
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mihich
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D006801:Humans; D036103:Nanotechnology; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism / Q000628:therapy; D012106:Research; D015398:Signal Transduction; D059016:Tumor Microenvironment