17th Annual Biomedical Research Symposium:
Systems Biology and Cancer

Systems biology is a holistic approach to understanding the complexity of biological systems and stems from the principle that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Cancer is a complex disease system that occurs through the orchestration of spatiotemporal processes at the molecular, cellular, and multicellular scales. These intracellular and intercellular processes undergo rewiring and adaptation in response to internal and external cues, with such evolution making it challenging to predict, prevent, and treat cancer. The unprecedented advances in technologies, such as single-cell and spatial multi-omics, CRISPR screening, and computational structural biology have produced an extensive amount of data for cancer research. Cancer systems biology leverages these technologies and integrates high-throughput and high-resolution data to decipher the heterogeneity and interactions of tumor cells with the tumor microenvironment. This information enables predictions of the biological mechanisms underlying disease progression or treatment response, and, ultimately, development of innovative therapies and improvements in the outcome for patients with cancer.

The 17th Annual St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Biomedical Symposium brings together leading experts in the fields of computational biology, single-cell omics, network biology, systems immunology, systems pharmacology, and protein engineering. These topics are of direct relevance to our mission to better understand and cure pediatric cancer and other diseases and will be of great interest to basic, translational, and clinical investigators.