Conference report
Meeting Report: EU–US Workshop on Molecular Signatures of DNA damage-induced Stress Responses: Cortona, Italy, 26–30 September 2003

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Introduction

The EU–US Workshop on Molecular Signatures of DNA Damage-induced Stress Responses was held in Cortona, Italy, 26–30 September 2003 and was attended by approximately 100 researchers and representatives of health advisory bodies from the EU and US. The workshop was organized jointly by The National Cancer Institute (NCI, US), The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS, NIH, US) and The Directorate General Research from the European Commission (EURATOM programme on radiation protection).

Three opening keynote lectures provided state-of-art overviews of research on global approaches to studying the response to DNA damage, structural biology of DNA repair and DNA replication machines, and the use of bioinformatics in computational systems biology. Four workshop sessions covered key aspects of current research in gene expression profiling, gene discovery and gene regulatory networks, proteomics and the integration of stress response pathways and harmonization of experimental settings and data management.

Extensive discussion sessions throughout the workshop provided the opportunity for researchers to establish collaborations. The discussions also provided a forum in which participants identified ways to facilitate future progress, defined research gaps and needs and developed immediate and long-term research goals.

This workshop summary includes a workshop overview, speaker presentation summaries (three keynote speakers and 22 speakers in four sessions) and a summary of the outcome of the workshop discussion sessions.

Section snippets

Workshop overview

This overview is based on the summation presented by Samuel Wilson (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) at the close of the last workshop session.

The research presented at this workshop strongly pointed to the value and potential of global genomics for analyzing the complex relationship between genetics, environment and human health. In the summation he presented at the close of the workshop, Samuel Wilson (National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences) indicated that the

Speaker presentation summaries

Keynote overview lectures

Chair: Christian Desaintes
Keynote address: Leona Samson

Global measurements of cellular responses to DNA damage: new approaches and challenges

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Leona Samson highlighted systems biology as a new research paradigm for the field of DNA damage responses. Samson defined the systems biology approach as an iterative multi-step process in which: (1) the biological system is perturbed, in this case by exposure to DNA damaging agents; (2)

Workshop discussion/recommendations

The following text presents five questions that were considered during workshop discussions. The answers to these questions are presented here in an effort to guide and facilitate future research applying state-of-the-art technologies to DNA damage-induced stress responses. Key points that arose during these discussions have been identified as specific recommendations for future research agendas (see Executive Summary).

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The EU–US Workshop on Molecular Signatures of Stress-Induced DNA Damage Responses was sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, United States National Institutes of Health, The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and The Directorate General Research of The European Commission. Additional information on the meeting is available at http://www.medgencentre.nl/molsign-workshop/CortonaSept2003.htm.

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