Workshop on Paradoxes in Early Stage Carcinogenesis: New Opportunities for Cancer Prevention and Early Detection

The prevailing paradigm in cancer research is the somatic mutation theory that proposes that successive DNA mutations and or epigenetic alterations in a single cell cause cancer. Much of the current research involves efforts to catalogue these genetic and epigenetic alterations and to analyze their functional effects on cancer development and progression. However, this research may miss some paradoxical aspects of early stage carcinogenesis for which there is no likely explanation under the somatic mutation theory. Some of the paradoxes that can provide new directions for research were recently discussed by Baker, S.G., and Kramer, B.S., in "Paradoxes in carcinogenesis: New opportunities for research directions," BMC Cancer 2007, 7:151, http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/7/151. Paradoxical aspects of early stage carcinogenesis offer opportunities for new research directions and should not be ignored.

The goals of the workshop are to (1) examine paradoxes in early stages of carcinogenesis and their impact on cancer prevention and early detection and (2) obtain recommendations from leading scientists to help drive molecular prevention and early detection research as envisioned by the NCI and DCP leadership. This workshop should stimulate new experimental research to resolve these paradoxes, thereby contributing to identification of new targets for cancer prevention and early detection.