Cancer: Body & Mind

Saturday, October 11, 2014
2:30-4:30pm
Past Event

Throughout history, no other disease entity has exceeded cancer in its evocation of fear, taboo, misconceptions, and metaphors. In her 1978 book, Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag threw down the gauntlet in her denunciation of metaphor applied to illness, as leading to a false connection between psychological traits and disease, scorning the contemporaneous, popular notion of... read more! »

Throughout history, no other disease entity has exceeded cancer in its evocation of fear, taboo, misconceptions, and metaphors.

In her 1978 book, Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag threw down the gauntlet in her denunciation of metaphor applied to illness, as leading to a false connection between psychological traits and disease, scorning the contemporaneous, popular notion of a “cancer personality,” that “[p]assion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest cellular recesses.”

 The advent of cellular, molecular and systems biology and genetics has profoundly altered our understanding of the biology of cancer. Such advances in knowledge help dispel fear and attenuate false metaphors; ironically, now over 35 years since Sontag’s treatise, the field of psychoneuroimmunology is revealing a truer picture of the influence of mind on cancer and the body’s immunity.

What is the latest understanding of the biology of cancer? What role, if any, does the mind have on the development and course of cancer? Our roundtable convenes cutting-edge cancer researchers to explore these and other questions.

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All Helix Center events are free and open to the public, including this one!

Roundtables are streamed live our website and the recording remains available after the event events.

This is a past event that happened on Saturday, October 11, 2014 2:30-4:30pm.

Participants

Andrea Califano

Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology, Columbia University

Andrea Califano is the Clyde and Helen Wu Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology, in the departments of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics and of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University. He is currently the founding director and chair of the Columbia Initiative for Systems Biology. He also serves as Associate Director for Bioinformatics in the Herbert... read more! »

Selina Chen-Kiang

Professor of Pathology and Professor of Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis at Weill-Cornell Medical College

Selina Chen-Kiang is Professor of Pathology and Professor of Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis at the Weill-Cornell Medical College. After receiving her PhD in Genetics and Development at Columbia University she went on to become a Jane Coffin Child Cancer Fellow and completed her postdoctoral training in molecular biology at Rockefeller University. Dr. Chen-Kiang’s focus is... read more! »

Susan Lutgendorf

Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Urology, member of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Iowa.

Dr. Lutgendorf is a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Urology and member of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Iowa. Her current work, funded by the National Cancer Institute, examines how factors such as stress, depression, and social support are linked to biological processes involved in angiogenesis,... read more! »

Hans-Guido Wendel

Principal Investigator at the Cancer Genetics Laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

Dr. Hans-Guido Wendel, M.D. is a Principal Investigator at the Cancer Genetics Laboratory at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He works to identify new cancer therapies based on the genetic origins of the disease. He come from Germany and trained in medicine in Aachen and Edinburgh and is currently an Associate Member of the Sloan-Kettering Institute.... read more! »