News
Quick Update - Spring/Summer 2011
Posted by Paul Macklin
5 June 2011 at 11:45 PM GMT (UTC +0h)
I had a great trip to the US in March/April. I had a few days with the family in Nebraska, flew on to visit some new colleagues at the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine (CAMM) at the University of Southern California, attended the second annual PS-OC investigators' meeting (NIH / NCI), and wrapped up with a short visit to Vittorio Cristini's group at the University of New Mexico. A hectic itinerary, but you really have to make the most of these international flights.
Simply put, the visit to CAMM was fantastic. Not only to they have the expected (and cutting-edge) proteomics work ongoing, but also some very impressive in vitro work, ranging from cell force measurements to simulated ECM structures, not to mention some great signaling work. I was also happy to see them working on multiple cell lines from breast and prostate cancer. I gave a talk (which unfortunately ran far too long), but it did help facilitate discussion with the group on future possibilities for collaboration. There is also great access to clinical prostate cancer data through the associated Westside Cancer Center. I'm very excited on the multidisciplinary work that we can accomplish. Many thanks to David Agus and his group for the invitation and the fantastic hospitality!
The PSOC meeting was also a tremendous success. I gave a short talk on our patient-calibrated DCIS modelling, which went pretty well. I also got to meet James Sethian (somebody I'd been dying to meet since my level set work at Minnesota and Irvine) and Daniel Hillis (the über-leader of the USC PSOC network). I'm really thrilled by the work going on in the broader PSOC network, and I am more and more convinced that California is a great place to do physics/mathematics-based, multidisciplinary cancer modeling. I look forward to further collaborations in the region! I greatly appreciate Parag Mallick's role in facilitating my attendance of the meeting, and I am grateful for the travel grant that really made it possible.
The visit to Vittorio's group was nice, too. Yao-Li Chuang is doing some great work as always, and Arnaud Chauviere is charging forward on new stem cell ideas in breast cancer. I got to meet James Freyer, who has of course done some fantastic tumour spheroid work; I had a great time in our discussions! I'd like to give a special thanks to Vittorio and Jennifer for the hospitality during my short stay.
On the publications front, I'm steadily chipping away at revisions on my JTB agent model paper. I'm merging Parts I and II into a single manuscript, and trying to cut at least 30% of the total content. Nearly there! I also wrapped up a modeling review with Vittorio's group, although Arnaud tells me they're expecting more revisions ...
I've been slowly rolling out updates to this website, particularly on better presenting the ongoing and planned projects. I plan to improve the "news" functionality soon so that it's easier for me to post (and more frequently).
