AIM OF THE MEETING
The ancient Greek term "anakoinosis", means "communication", induction of anakoinosis in tumors aims at establishing novel communicative behavior of tumor tissues or between tumor tissue and hosting organism by re-modulating gene expression.
Similar to reprogramming somatic cells to induced pluripotent stem cells, tumor tissues may be therapeutically reprogrammed so that differentiation, senescence or apoptosis of the tumor cells is accessible even in heavily pre-treated and resistant tumors.
Anakoinosis with its communication redirecting intension is thus the opposite of classic targeted therapies, which aim at interrupting tumor-promoting pathways or eliminating single cell compartments with maximal tolerable doses.
The use of re-modulating active drugs in resistant metastatic neoplasias of quite different histologic origin unclosed the option for interfering with important communication rules within tumor tissues, for integrating palliative care into the trajectory of cancer care, and for identifying the procedure as generally applicable approach in chemorefractory tumors and hematologic malignancies.
The aim of this meeting is to communicate the clinical data on therapies inducing anakoinosis, and discuss the molecular basis of communication processes among cellular compartments in the tumor, which are still elusive, requiring cooperative efforts between different specialists to improve knowledge and clinical results.
We hope that this meeting will help also establish a positive "anakoinosis" between clinicians and experimental biologists, as well as between scientists and general public, which might be helped in understanding that cancer can be fought via modalities that are relatively well tolerated, efficacious and, via drug repurposing, less expensive for the patient and the community than multiple current approaches.
We particularly thank Anticancer Fund for patronizing the first Meeting on Anakoinosis in Roma.