EMBO | EMBL Symposium
Between Immune Discovery, iMed and Mechanisms of Drug Resistance and Tolerance in Bacteria, Fungi, and Cancer
Drug tolerance, persistence and resistance are increasingly a problem of global health, both for infectious disease and cancer. The underlying biological mechanisms underpinning drug tolerance, persistence and resistance are increasingly being studied and reveal a complex interplay between (cellular) evolution, (non-genetic) plasticity, biochemistry, and metabolism. Understanding these mechanisms potentiates the long-term promise to develop new therapeutic strategies that are less prone to resistance, thus prolonging the clinical benefit for the patients and, in the short term, provide a better understanding of clonal evolution and single cell biology.
With the second edition of this symposium, we aim to bring together a highly international group of researchers to exchange in person on the latest work on the biological mechanisms that mediate drug resistance and tolerance across species barriers.
Key themes
- Cell and population evolution under drug pressure
- Biochemical mechanisms of drug resilience
- Cellular states and drug resilience
- Genome plasticity and adaptive evolution
- Metabolism, stress responses, and cellular fitness
- The cellular ecosystem of drug responses
- Efflux, microenvironment, and extracellular drivers of resilience
- Targeting drug resilience: from mechanisms to therapy