The Transregio 17 is formed by researchers at the universities of Marburg and Würzburg; It is co-ordinated by Martin Eilers and Manfred Schartl.

The Transregio aims at understanding how key cellular properties of tumor cells, such as deregulated proliferation, apoptosis, chemoresistance and metastasis emerge from the interaction between deregulated signaling pathways and the genetic status of the tumor cells.