Hudson Director joins innovative ‘big data’ fight against cancer

Hudson Institute Director and distinguished cancer researcher Professor Bryan Williams has been invited to speak at a Hope Funds for Cancer Research meeting in New York.

Professor Williams will join 25 other invited speakers including two Nobel Laureates in Medicine or Physiology, two Lasker Awardees, and two Breakthrough Prize winners, at the event on April 26- 27.

The Hope Funds event will focus on using cutting-edge science with the potential to accelerate the provision of new treatments to people with difficult-to-treat cancers.

Professor Williams is an international authority on innate immunity and cancer biology, who has made major contributions to our understanding of the antiviral mechanisms of actions of interferons, advancing their therapeutic utility.

The event will explore novel ways of addressing and improving translating extensive findings into usable information, a field called ‘big data’.

The way cancer researchers approach data is changing rapidly with the growth of technology. New approaches to collecting, storing and interpreting biological and statistical data are becoming crucial to improving outcomes for cancer patients.

“This is an unprecedented gathering of some of the finest minds in science,” Andrew Robertson, a Trustee of the Hope Funds for Cancer Research said.

“For example, we have both the discoverer of the structure of DNA and a leading contributor to the gravity wave project – all focusing, for a day and a half, on advancing cutting-edge cancer research.

“We are humbled to be hosting this historic event.”

Professor Williams will deliver talks, sit on panel discussions, and participate in a group workshop with Google’s Kirk Vallis as a moderator.

Hope Funds for Cancer Research is an organization dedicated to advancing innovative research for difficult-to-treat and understudied cancers.

These include pancreatic, lung, liver, sarcomas, oesophageal, brain, gastric, and ovarian cancers, as well as rare leukaemia’s, lymphomas and MDS. These cancers are insidiously aggressive illnesses that kill most of their victims within months, even with aggressive chemotherapy.

The Trustees of the Hope Funds for Cancer Research believe that funding young, innovative researchers will lead to breakthroughs in these areas and increase life expectancy for those with these types of cancers.

This event is being made possible with educational grants from Bristol Myers Squibb, Janssen Oncology, New Link Genetics, and Jonathan & Nanci Lewis and sponsorship from A4 Architecture and J. McLaughlin.

Speakers

Imre Bartos, Columbia University

Lewis C. Cantley, Weill Cornell Medical School

Donald Cleveland, UC San Diego

Gina DeNicola, Weill Cornell Medical School

Harold Freeman, Institute for Patient Navigation

Antonio Grillo-Lopez, Idec Pharmaceuticals retired

William C. Hahn, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

James Holland, Mt. Sinai Medical School

Tyler Jacks, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, MIT

Jurre Kamphorst, Beatson Institute, Scotland

Bluma Lesch, Whitehead Institute at MIT

Joan Massague, Sloan-Kettering Institute

Craig Mello, University of Massachusetts Medical School

Malcolm A.S. Moore, Sloan-Kettering Institute

Larry Norton, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Thales Papagiannakopoulos, NYU Medical School

David Page, Whitehead Institute at MIT

Robert Roeder, Rockefeller University

Joan Steitz, Yale University

Sohail Tavazoie, Rockefeller University

Craig Thompson, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

James D. Watson, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Robert Weinberg, Whitehead Institute at MIT

Monte Winslow, Stanford University

Bryan R.G. Williams, Hudson Institute, Melbourne Australia

Richard Young, Whitehead Institute at MIT

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