Wnt Meeting 1996

A meeting on Wnt genes was held at Stanford University, August 9 and 10, organized by Harold Varmus (NIH) and Reel Nusse (HHMI-Stanford). This meeting was the first formal version of a series of informal Wnt gatherings held over the past years at various locations. The previous meetings were always inspired by the importance of Wnt genes in animal development and tumorigenesis, but also frustrated by the lack of understanding of the molecular aspects of signaling by these secreted proteins. Much to the delight of the attendants, the 1996 meeting brought together a surprising number of novel findings on various aspects of Wnt signaling. Only half a year ago, very little was known about the Wnt signal transduction pathway, but recently, specific receptors and various intracellular components have been discovered and many of these novel findings were reported at the meeting. It seems that the power of Drosophila and C. elegans genetics, combined with in vitro assays for Wnt signaling and rapid biological assays in Xenopus will lead to rapid progress in understanding how Wnt molecules bring about their interesting biological effects.