The Warwick Cancer Centre supported a workshop on developing new methods to tell if tumours can tell time, i.e., have a biological clock like all healthy cell in our bodies. It has previously be shown that disruption of the clock, for example in shift workers, can lead to higher incidences of cancer and that some experimental tumours without a clock lead to a worse prognosis.

The workshop was held at Warwick in Venice (Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Venice, Italy) on 18-20 March 2024. The meeting had three main themes: (i) Mathematical modelling of the clock, (ii) Developing and validating molecular biomarkers of the clock, (iii) clinical need and applications of clock biomarkers.

The meeting focused on interaction between multi-disciplinary participants and aimed to facilitate integration of recently proposed circadian biomarkers and their applications. Participants included mathematician, statisticians, physiologists, circadian biologists and clinicians from USA, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, Korea, Japan and UK.