September 2, 2009

epigenetics: past, present and future

Speakers:
Prof Wolf Reik, Professor of Epigenetics at the Babraham Institute, University of Cambridge
Prof Martin Widschwendter, Professor in Women’s Cancer and Consultant Gynaecological Oncology Surgeon, University College London

It is 25 years since scientists first determined that there might be heritable biological information separate from DNA – that there might be another inheritance ‘code’ in addition to what we understand within classical genetics. As the field of ‘epigenetics’ matures, research in this area is fundamentally changing the way we think about normal development and disease. The SMC invited two leading experts in this field to brief the media, in advance of an international meeting being held in Cambridge on 4-6th September, addressing questions including how the field of epigenetics has developed since the original discoveries of 1984, and what breakthroughs we can expect in the future.