Forbeck on the Forefront

This episode recaps a conversation with Forbeck Forum co-chairs Dr. Liling Wan (UPenn) and Dr. Benjamin Sabari (UT Southwestern) about the science behind their upcoming forum on nuclear condensates in cancer. Condensates are membrane-free compartments cells use to concentrate proteins and RNA — and they play a major role in switching genes on and off. When that process goes wrong, oncogenes activate and tumor suppressors go silent. The recap covers how this forum moves the field from foundational biophysics toward translational questions: what condensates actually do in disease, and how researchers might target the ones driving cancer.

This month's episode dives into an upcoming Scientific Forum, Next Generation Models of Cancer, happening this November in Pacific Grove, California. Our hosts unpack an interview our team recorded with the forum's co-chairs, Dr. Esra Akbay (UT Southwestern) and Dr. Mohamed Abazeed (Northwestern), on what they call the ecosystem of imperfection surrounding cancer research today: every lab tool, from mice to zebrafish to lab-grown tissue, gets something right and something wrong, and the real work is figuring out which one to trust for which question, especially as new cancer drugs demand better ways to test them.

Dr. W. Kimryn Rathmell first connected with the Forbeck Foundation as a Scholar in 2006. Today, after serving as the 17th Director of the National Cancer Institute, she leads The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and takes the helm of our Scientific Advisory Board. We sit down to celebrate her appointment and trace a remarkable path defined by discovery, dedication, and an enduring commitment to conquering cancer.

In this episode, we preview the upcoming Forbeck Forum on Cellular Plasticity, chaired by Dr. Ben Stanger (University of Pennsylvania) and Dr. Cory Abate-Shen (Columbia University). The conversation explores a rapidly emerging area of cancer research: how cancer cells don't just accumulate mutations, but can actually change what type of cell they are — a process called cellular plasticity — allowing them to spread, survive, and resist treatment in ways scientists are only beginning to understand.

Ben and Cory explain why this field has taken off in just the last few years, how plasticity connects across many different cancer types, and why understanding it could open the door to an entirely new class of cancer treatments. They also discuss how a Cancer Grand Challenges competition helped galvanize a global research community — and why bringing together scientists from different disciplines and career stages is exactly the kind of environment where breakthroughs happen.

In this episode of Forbeck on the Forefront, we dive into a fascinating discussion between Jason Kwon of AbbVie Pharmaceutical, sommelier Colton Schara of Left Bank Distributors. As a preview to the Foundation’s upcoming April 9 wine dinner titled Sips for Science, we unpack a rich exchange exploring the compelling parallel between winemaking and cancer research, specifically how the environment in which ideas are experienced, whether in a thoughtfully designed wine glass or an intimate scientific forum, fundamentally shapes the outcome. Along the way, we discuss wide-ranging connections to Darwin, the Manhattan Project, and precision medicine. It's an engaging, accessible listen that makes a genuinely thought-provoking case for why setting and structure matter as much in science as they do at the dinner table, and leaves you curious about what might emerge when the right people are put in the right room together.

In this episode, we preview the upcoming Forbeck Forum Cancer and Aging: Convergent and Opposing Forces, chaired by Alejo Efeyan, PhD (Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas), and Nada Kalaany, PhD (Harvard Medical School). The conversation explores one of the most fundamental and unresolved questions in cancer research: how aging reshapes our biology in ways that can both suppress and promote cancer. Drawing on perspectives spanning metabolism, genetics, immunology, and systems physiology, this intimate, interdisciplinary forum brings together leading scientists from around the world to challenge assumptions, share early ideas, and spark new questions that could reshape how we study the connection between cancer and aging.

In this episode, we take a deep dive into the findings from a recent Forbeck Forum on Cell Death in Cancer Therapy, chaired by Kristopher Sarosiek, PhD (Harvard) and Cristina Muñoz-Pinedo, PhD (IDIBELL).

The discussion explores—in accessible, lay-friendly terms—how cancer treatments ultimately work by killing cancer cells, and why understanding the differences between cancer cell death and normal cell death is crucial for improving therapies. Drs. Sarosiek and Muñoz-Pinedo explained how various treatments trigger cell death, how the immune system can be activated or suppressed depending on the type of cell death, and why minimizing collateral damage to healthy tissues remains a central challenge.

The conversation also covers:

• How the immune system recognizes dying cancer cells and why certain forms of cell death can “wake up” immune responses.
• Why some healthy cells can recover from therapy while others—like heart cells—cannot.
• Why cancer cells sometimes hide in specific niches, such as the bone marrow or low-oxygen (hypoxic) regions, and how this affects treatment resistance and relapse.
• Key themes from the meeting’s sessions, including immunogenic cell death, balancing tumor vs. healthy tissue toxicity, and uniting clinicians, basic researchers, and industry scientists.
• The growing intersection of immunology and cancer biology, and how new forms of therapy rely on understanding this relationship.

Overall, the episode offers an insightful look at how researchers are rethinking cancer therapy by focusing not only on killing cancer cells, but on controlling how cells die—and how the immune system responds.

In this podcast episode, we recap a Forbeck Forum that explored how cancer’s rapid evolution makes it so difficult to treat. Experts from experimental, computational, and clinical backgrounds discussed the fundamental principles of cancer evolution and potential therapeutic vulnerabilities. Across four sessions—covering everything from genetic mutations to chromosome instability and tumor population dynamics—they examined how cancers evolve at multiple genomic scales and develop resistance to therapy. With insights from cutting-edge tools like CRISPR, long-read sequencing, and single-cell analysis, the discussions highlighted how basic biology and clinical applications intersect. This episode captures the key takeaways, new ideas, and collaborative approaches that emerged from this unique gathering of cancer researchers.

AI is reshaping cancer research and drug discovery. In this podcast, Dr. Peter Winter (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard) and Dr. Barbara Engelhardt (Stanford University and Gladstone Institutes) explore how AI is helping identify drug targets, design better molecules, and accelerate the path to new treatments. They also dive into the challenges of data quality, model validation, and building collaborations between biologists and AI experts to push the field forward.

In this debut episode we dive deep into the Forbeck Foundation as it celebrates its 40‑year anniversary. Our hosts break down how the foundation’s unique, intimate “Forbeck Forums” bring together world‑leading cancer researchers in small, unconstrained gatherings—far from the usual massive conferences—to spark real‑time problem solving and accelerate breakthroughs.

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What you’ll hear

• Why intimacy beats scale: the power of small‑group collaboration for cutting‑edge cancer science.
• Highlights from the foundation’s flagship events—State of the Forbeck Webinar, the Ruby Gala, Blue‑Jean Ball, and a series of community fundraisers (golf outing, Como Crawl, pickleball/mahjong, Walk the Lake).
• A sneak peek at upcoming Forbeck Forums (topics such as persistence & apoptosis, cancer evolution, nucleosome biology, AI‑driven drug discovery, and more).

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