Title: “Advances in the development of a first clinically viable MYC inhibitor for cancer treatment”

Laura Soucek graduated in Biological Sciences at the University La Sapienza, Rome (Italy) in 1996. She was then awarded her PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology in 2001. She was a postdoctoral fellow and Assistant Researcher in Dr. Gerard Evan’s laboratory at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF, USA) until 2011. Since then, she has been leading the Models of Cancer Therapies Laboratory at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO), in Barcelona, Spain, where she became Director of the Preclinical and Translational Research Program in 2022. She is also ICREA Research Professor and Associate Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona (UAB).

She is a cancer research expert specialized in Myc inhibition strategies, as well as founder and CEO of Peptomyc S.L., a spin off company that aims at treating cancer with anti-Myc peptides.

Title: “CAR T-cell immunotherapy of solid tumours: moving through the generations”

Dr John Maher is a clinical immunologist who leads the “CAR Mechanics” research group within King’s College London. He played a key role in the early development of second generation (CD28) CAR technology while a visiting fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, an approach that has achieved clinical impact in haematological malignancies. His research group is focused on the development of adoptive immunotherapy using CAR engineered and gamma delta T-cells, with a primary emphasis on solid tumour types. He is also the scientific founder and chief scientific officer of a spin-out company named Leucid Bio. In addition, he is a consultant immunologist within King’s Health Partners and Eastbourne Hospital.

Title: “De-escalation of radiation in Early Hormone Receptor-positive breast cancer with one to three positive nodes”

Dr. V. Suzanne Klimberg, professor and division chief of Surgical Oncology and Colorectal Surgery in the Department of Surgery at the University of Texas Medical Branch, was inducted as president of the Southern Surgical Association. Klimberg is the first woman to hold the position of president for the Southern Surgical Association and previously served as treasurer. 

Dr. V. Suzanne Klimberg has 27 years of experience in breast surgical oncology. She has pioneered innovative breast cancer treatment methods, authored over 245 publications in peer-reviewed journals and edited 10 books and holds 8 patents, and has held over 25 editorial board positions for surgical journals and publications. Additionally, Dr. Klimberg has won over 75 awards in teaching, research, and surgery, and is the past president of three major American surgical organizations.

Throughout her career, Klimberg has pioneered innovative breast cancer treatment methods and holds several patents in surgical treatment methods. Her clinical interests include prevention of lymphedema using Axillary Reverse Mapping technique; needleless breast surgery; minimally invasive breast surgery; treatment of breast cancer with radiofrequency ablation; diagnosis of breast cancer with tears; high-risk management; breast pain; and chest wall pain after surgery.

Title: “Overcoming Patient Access Issues in CAR-T Therapies”

Jeff is a seasoned CEO with a proven track record at profitably growing emerging companies and business divisions. He has raised over $15M in seed capital from angel investors to start four different companies which he then led to becoming profitable or acquired. Jeff got his start in Cell therapy as the Chief Operating Officer of Progenitor Cell Therapy (PCT) where he supported over 25 clinical trials in the Cell and Gene Therapy field. These trials ranged from Phase I to Phase III pivotal trials. Some highlights include:

• Responsible for tech transferring Kite’s T-Cell therapy out of the NIH, Novartis’ cell therapy out of UPenn and Adaptimmume’s cell therapy out of UPenn.
• Led B-MoGen Biotechnologies to develop TcBuster the first industry wide transposon tool for the cell therapy space.
• Has led Luminary Therapeutics to an approved Phase I IND for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma with a novel ligand CAR that has three distinct antigens – directed to overcome the 25% patient relapse rates due to antigen escape.
• Has led OX2 Therapeutics to a Phase I clinical trial for recurrent Glioblastoma.

Title: “Identifying novel, effective combination strategies using large scale functional genomics”

Dr Roderick Beijersbergen is named professor by special appointment of Functional Genomics at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (SILS-UvA) per 1 May. The chair was established on behalf of the Netherlands Cancer Institute. Beijersbergen will combine the professorship by special appointment with his work as group leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute. This position allows him to bring together different technologies that will enable complex screening models for investigating cancer and other diseases.

Roderick Beijersbergen’s research group focuses on the development and application of large-scale screening technologies for the identification of novel targets for cancer therapy. With the development of the pooled screening technology, originally for RNA interference and more recently implemented for CRISPR/CAS9 screening, it is now possible to manipulate all genes in the human genome to study their role in cancer cell behaviour and therapy response. The use of these screening platforms has yielded important findings including novel cancer drug targets, insights in mechanisms of resistance and the identification of enhancers of response to targeted therapy. This has led to new oncology drug combinations currently tested in the clinic.

Title: “A senescent tumour microenvironment promotes lung cancer initiation and progression: therapeutic opportunities”

Daniel studied Biology and Molecular Biology at the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain, where he also completed his PhD with cum laude honours within the Viral DNA Replication Group at the Centre of Molecular Biology Severo Ochoa (CMBSO), under the supervision of Dr Margarita Salas. During his PhD he also worked at Sir William Dunn School of Pathology (University of Oxford, UK) as a visiting student. He was then awarded an I3P Fellowship followed by a Spanish National Research Council Fellowship to conduct postdoctoral research on DNA replication, resulting in several first- and/or corresponding authored papers. Based on his research, a patent was filed on a novel gene delivery system to Sygnis AG Pharma (2013). He then moved to the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) to Dr Manuel Serrano’s group, where his productive work cultimaned with two awarded grants: a Ramon y Cajal Programme Senior Grant and a National Programme Grant for Researched Aimed at the H2020 Societal Changes.

In 2016, he joined the Department of Oncology at the University of Cambridge as a Senior Research Associate and Principal Investigator as part of the Cancer Early Detection Programme of the Cambridge Cancer Centre. Some of his current funding sources include the MRC New Investigator Research Grant, the Royal Society Research Grant and the CRUK-OHSU Early Detection Grant. 

Title: “Next Generation Radiotherapy – on the Preclinical Level”

Martin Pruschy heads the Laboratory for Applied Radiobiology, which is affiliated to the Department of Radiation Oncology of the University Hospital Zurich. He studied Biochemistry at ETH Zurich and obtained his PhD in the field of cellular basic research. As a Postdoc, he conducted research at the Department of Chemistry at Harvard University in the area of chemically controlled gene therapy during three years and during one year at the Institute of Radiation Oncology of the University of Zurich.

In 2003, he received his Venia Legendi for Translational Research in Oncology from the University of Zurich. Since 1997, he has been the Head of the Research Unit for Molecular Radiobiology at the Department of Radiation Oncology of the University Hospital Zurich. He also serves as Lecturer at the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering of ETH Zurich. In addition, he is actively involved in the area of teaching at the European level. 

Title “Robotic cancer surgery — Surgical innovations defining precision approach”

Jim Khan is a consultant surgeon at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and Professor of Surgery at the University of Portsmouth. His training included senior registrar at Basingstoke with Prof Heald, the National Laparoscopic Fellowship at Colchester (UK) with Prof Motson and a travelling clinical fellowship at Mayo Clinic Rochester (US). He also travelled to Korea for training in Robotic colorectal surgery with Prof Kim.

Prof Khan has been a national trainer in laparoscopic colorectal surgery and European proctor and trainer in robotic colorectal surgery.His research interests include Clinical research in robotic colorectal cancer surgery, completemesocolic excision for colon cancer, Quality of life and functional outcomes after low anterior resection, training in laparoscopic & robotic colorectal surgery. He chairs the robotic committee at ACPGBI, is director of research at ALSGBI, leads the colorectal group at the RADAR RCS consortium,  and is member of core working groups in robotic surgery at the ESCP, ESSO and ASCRS