A talk by Frederic Thomas, Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Research on Cancer – Montpellier and University of Montpellier, France.
The talk will present an evolutionary perspective of cancer and will be divided into 4 main parts. First, what is cancer, when does it appear during the story of life and why it is mainly an evolutionary problem. Then, in order to stimulate discussion, two exciting and provocative research directions will be presented: the first one is entitled the evolutionary ecology of organs, a missing link to understand cancer development and the second one concerns the possibility that malignant cells could manipulate us more than what we imagine at the moment to favour their proliferation. The talk will finish with an ecological perspective of cancer, namely its underestimated role to understand ecosystem functioning.
ALL WELCOME
About the speaker
Fred’s main research interests are studying how parasites manipulate their hosts and the resulting evolutionary dynamics and investigating the ecology and evolution of oncogenic phenomena, bringing together medicine and evolutionary ecology. Fred has more than 200 publications, including Nature and TREE, on a broad range of topics including, cancer, disease ecology, evolutionary biology and animal behaviour. He has also edited 12 books including his latest book to be released next week: “The ecology and evolution of cancer”. He is Associate Editor of both, the Journal of Evolutionary Medicine and Evolutionary Applications and member of the National Centre for Scientific Research in France.