Evolutionary Foundations for Medicine and Public Health: Focus on Infection and Cancer

August 6-10 at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine

Registration now open CME credit available

This course will be limited to 40 participants.  It will be appropriate for those with a background in biology and/or medicine at diverse levels. Special expertise in evolutionary biology is not required, however those who have already studied evolutionary biology will have specialized opportunities. In order to maximize benefits to this developing field, admission preference will be offered to physicians and professors who teach or anticipate teaching courses on the subject, and to members of minority groups who may be eligible for support from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. Researchers and students from advanced undergraduate to postdocs will be warmly welcomed.

Faculty

Description

This intensive one-week course will introduce strategies for applying core principles of evolutionary biology to problems in medicine and public health, with a special focus on infection and cancer. The course will not attempt to cover all possible applications, it will focus on a few examples.  Some especially relevant principles include life history theory, host pathogen co-evolution, the regulation of defenses, developmental plasticity, and trade-offs shaping reproductive strategies.  These principles will be applied to clinically relevant topics including aging, antibiotic resistance, clinical management of fever, endothelial disease, prenatal experience and metabolic syndrome, and reproductive cancers. This year’s course will have extensive special expertise available on topics related to cancer and infectious disease. Mornings will be devoted to lectures and structured discussions. After lunch, participants will gather in small groups for faculty led discussions on a number of specialized topics such as strategies to prevent antibiotic resistance, the role of infection in mental disorders, how social evolution theory might advance new chemotherapy strategies, how viral sequences get incorporated into genomes, the role of imprinting in controlling gene expression. Participants will be in small workgroups with faculty and others who share specialized interests. Most workgroups will investigate a specific topic, for instance, malignant melanoma, cervical cancer, breast cancer, sexually transmitted diseases, antibiotic resistance, or vaccine design. Other groups will address other topics such as strategies for educating physicians, creating curriculum materials, or current debates about levels of selection.  Each group will develop a possible research or teaching project, for presentation on Friday. Individuals are also free to create their own projects. Late afternoons are not prescheduled, so participants can organize their own additional discussions and projects or pursue individual interests,  including recreation in Acadia National Park.  Several optional preplanned expeditions are available, including whale watching, and guided hikes in the park.