Abstract

This meeting report on the fourth Fabisch Symposium for Cancer Research and Molecular Biology describes the aims of the international meeting, the main topics of the presentations, and the highlights of the conference. The fourth Fabisch Symposium was the second on Targeted Tumor Therapies and held from April 1-3, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. The meeting focused on noncarrier-based targeted tumor therapies and their clinical application. The world's leading experts in this field presented the state of the art on tumor-specific targeting and tumor growth inhibition, drug design and production, and the description of innovative strategies for improved delivery. The topics concentrated on immunotoxins and other targeted toxins as anticancer drugs, thus providing a specialized meeting platform not existing elsewhere for these therapeutics. Although a number of innovative approaches on the avoidance of immune responses against highly effective toxins were presented, a notable conclusion of the meeting and direction for future research is the acute need to further reduce the immunogenicity of the targeted toxins, which hampers the efficacy of this group of therapeutics in clinical studies. The meeting successfully fostered plans for further research and cooperation between different groups to hopefully achieve advanced translational and clinical studies.