Frontiers in Cancer Science Conference Unites Global Researchers
Guest post by Patrick Tan, MD, PhD
From November 1-3, 2021, Singapore will hold its 13th Frontiers in Cancer Science (FCS) conference virtually. This annual conference started in 2009 as a one-day symposium for the common purpose of sharing and advancing knowledge both locally and with the global scientific community. It has now grown into a major international cancer conference in the region, with over 500 participants registering annually.
FCS is the largest cancer conference in Singapore and regularly brings together cancer researchers and cancer physicians to share their pioneering ideas and novel information in an interactive environment that fosters collaboration. Highlights of the previous FCS conferences can be seen on the conference website. FCS 2020, held virtually for the first time last November, welcomed close to 1,200 registrants from over 50 countries, including Australia, China, India, Malaysia, Japan, the United States, and Great Britain.
FCS 2021 brings together a stellar list of international and local distinguished cancer researchers covering all aspects of cancer research, with complementary knowledge and expertise. Advances in both the basic science and the clinical realms will be presented. There will also be the opportunity for young investigators to showcase their work, and selected talks from poster abstracts will be presented at the Oral Abstract Speaker sessions during the conference. Prizes will also be awarded for the best posters.
Since 2020, FCS is honored to partner with AACR to concurrently hold the AACR-FCS Education Sessions—the first in Southeast Asia. The inaugural Education Sessions were highly successful, covering timely topics including CRISPR, driver mutations, and breast pathology. The goal of the Education Sessions is to provide graduate students and early-career investigators with a broader view of selected subject matters, presented by key opinion leaders. Speakers for 2021 AACR-FCS Education Sessions include Jesús Gil Valles, PhD, of Imperial College London, who will discuss cellular senescence; Thomas Gajewski, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago, who will discuss resistance to immunotherapy, and Gerard Evan, PhD, FAACR, of the University of Cambridge, who will give a talk titled “How to Survive in Academic Science.”
With the ongoing pandemic, this year’s FCS will continue to be held virtually. We strive to provide an excellent online platform for learning, exchanging ideas, and developing collaborations in this “new normal.” We are hopeful this virtual arrangement will maintain the goals of the FCS and engage our audiences from all over the world with renowned speakers in the field of cancer research.
FCS is jointly organized by the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore, Duke-NUS Medical School, Genome Institute of Singapore, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, National Cancer Centre Singapore, National University Cancer Institute, Singapore, and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
You can find the program highlights for this exciting international conference from Singapore, as well as information about registration and abstract submission here.
Patrick Tan, MD, PhD, is the Chair of this year’s Frontiers in Cancer Science conference. He is the executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore and professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School Singapore. He is also the executive director of PRECISE, a business unit under the Ministry of Health implementing Singapore’s National Precision Medicine program. In 2018, he received the AACR Team Science Award as Team Leader, representing the first time a team from Asia has received the award. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Bioethics Advisory Committee, and a Board Member of the International Gastric Cancer Association.
