IOSPress

Approximately 15% of cancers worldwide, and 23% of cancers in developing countries, are now attributed to infectious agents. Infectious agents represent, therefore, priorities in cancer prevention research.
The Cancer Biomarkers Research Group (CBRG) of the Division of Cancer Prevention (DCP), National Cancer Institute, sponsored a workshop entitled, “Molecular Signatures of Infectious Agents” in Bethesda, Maryland, September 7-8, 2000, to identify molecular signatures of infectious agents and to utilize this information for risk assessment and development of prevention strategies against these infectious agents. The specific objectives of the workshop were to review state-of-the-science in detection technology that can identify extraneous genomic insertion in human cancers and to establish future research directions for using the molecular signatures of infectious agents for early detection, risk assessment, and prevention of cancer.