Meeting Summary

The retinoblastoma tumor suppressor (RB1) was discovered due to its role in the childhood eye cancer, retinoblastoma, but is part of a pathway that is defective in most, if not all human cancers. Moreover, it is conserved in diverse organisms including mammals, plants, worms, and flies. The initial biological function ascribed to RB protein was cell cycle regulation, and the connection between RB, its relatives p107 (RBL1) and p130 (RBL2), and the E2f family of transcription factors is now text book material. But insight into other target proteins and RB functions has expanded furiously.

RB has been linked with diverse processes including apoptosis, autophagy, senescence, genome stability, immunity, telomere function, stem cell biology, and the development of many cell types, including placental trophoblasts, neurons, muscle, epithelia, erythrocytes and many others. In view of its broad importance to human biology and human health, we felt it would be exciting to hold an international RB meeting to bring together leading and emerging experts in the field. The first meeting was held in 2009 and there was considerable enthusiasm for a biennial event. The speakers list at that meeting can be seen here. A summary of the exciting topics at the first meeting was published in Cancer Research.

In addition to regular seminars from invited speakers we also have arranged:

Two lunch time workshops focussed specifically on the topic of genome scale strategies to study the Rb pathway. See the schedule for details on speakers.
Multiple slots for short talks selected from the abstract. These include talks for the main meeting and the workshop sessions.
Two poster sessions. As at the last meeting, we will assign each speaker a minimum of two posters to visit, with the goal of encouraging interaction between trainees and PIs.

We hope you will join us at the 2nd International RB Meeting. We look forward to seeing you in Toronto for Nov 17th and 18th, 2011.

Meeting Organizers 2011: Rod Bremner and Eldad Zacksenhaus

Steering Committee 2011: Rod Bremner, Eldad Zacksenhaus, Fred Dick, Erik Knudsen and Julien Sage

Second International RB Tumor Suppressor Meeting

The "Second International RB Tumor Suppressor Meeting" will be held in Toronto from 8am Thursday Nov 17th to 5:30pm Friday Nov 18th. There will be opportunities for students and post docs to mingle with the seminar speakers and we encourage you to submit a poster abstract. Toronto is an exciting, multicultural venue and the meeting will be held in the heart of the city near many local attractions. We very much look forward to meeting you in November.

Date: Nov 17-18, 2011

Toronto, Canada

The meeting will be held at:

89 Chestnut Street
Toronto, Ontario M5G 1R1

Tel: 416-977-0707
Fax 416-585-3164

More Toronto information is available here

This meeting is sponsored by:

Please click on the symbol to find out more about each organization.