The American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting is underway, which you can follow along from at home on Twitter here. Elizabeth Blackburn was inaugurated yesterday as the organization's president. "We are at the stage in cancer research where we can start thinking about prevention as well as cures. The focus on cancer cures and treatments continues, and now there's more hope than ever that rigorous research can be brought to bear on prevention," Blackburn says in a statement.
Blogger Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sigillata also notes that Janet Rowley received the group's Lifetime Achievement Award in Cancer Research. Rowley most notably studied the Philadelphia chromosome.
Nature's In the Field blog also gives a run-down of talks on cancer genomes, including ones from Arul Chinnaiyan and Bert Vogelstein. Nature's Brendan Maher writes that Vogelstein's presentation "seemed too good to be true, asserting that thanks to decades of research, cancer is essentially a known entity." Maher points out that NCI's Anna Barker later "urged participants to embrace the complexity of cancer."