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    1. Scientific & B2B Programme
    2. Invited speakers


    Invited speakers
  • Douglas Hanahan - Laboratory of Translational Oncology, EPFL, ISREC, Lausanne
     
    Douglas Hanahan is Director of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), and Co-Director of the new multi-institutional Swiss Cancer Center Leman that is based in Lausanne. Hanahan trained at MIT and Harvard University. He worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a graduate student and then as a faculty member. Subsequently he spent twenty-one years in the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics at UCSF before moving to EPFL in 2009. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, a member of the US National Academies of Medicine and of Science, and the European Molecular Biology Organization. He received an honorary degree from the University of Dundee (2011) and an award for distinguished cancer research from the Fondazione San Salvatore (Lugano, Switzerland). In 2014, he was elected as a fellow of the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and honored with the AACR’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The Hanahan lab’s research is focused on elucidating mechanisms of tumor development and progression in genetically engineered mouse models of human cancer, a field Hanahan has helped pioneer, with a particular focus on functional contributions of the disparate cell types of the tumor microenvironment, and on applying knowledge of mechanisms to guide combinatorial therapeutic strategies with promise to improve the treatment of human cancers.
    M. Celeste Simon - Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute, Philadelphia

    M. Celeste Simon, Ph.D. is the Scientific Director of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her bachelor's degree from Miami University and completed a Ph.D. in biochemistry at Rockefeller University in 1985. She conducted postdoctoral research with Joseph Nevins at Rockefeller and then Stuart Orkin at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Simon became an Assistant Professor of Medicine/Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at the University of Chicago in 1992. In its first National Competition, she was named an Assistant Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1994, remaining an HHMI investigator for twenty years, until August, 2014.

    In 1999, Dr. Simon moved to the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and was one of the founding laboratories of the newly formed Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute (AFCRI) there. She was promoted to Associate Professor of Cell and Developmental biology in 1999, and full Professor in 2006. In 2007, she became the Scientific Director of the AFCRI. Dr. Simon's research is focused on how cells sense and respond to changes in the availability of molecular oxygen and nutrients. This affects normal development, physiology, and numerous diseases, such as the growth of solid tumors. The Simon Laboratory is studying how O2 sensing impacts tumor angiogenesis, inflammation, metabolism, metastasis, and overall disease progression. She is studying both animal models and cancer patient samples with the ultimate goal of developing novel strategies to treat tumors such as pancreatic cancer, soft tissue sarcoma, and colorectal cancer. Dr. Simon currently directs a laboratory of 20 individuals, including graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, clinical fellows, and research technicians. The AFCRI employs 400 researchers working in roughly 30 independent laboratories. Dr. Simon has received numerous awards recognizing her research, such as the Fouad Bashour Award for Distinguished Physiologists, Stanley N. Cohen Award for Biomedical Research, and Elliot Osserman Award from the Israel Cancer Research Fund. In 2014, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Board of Directors for the American Association for Cancer Research.
    Hervé Avet-Loiseau

    Cancer Research Center of Toulouse (CRCT)
    Sébastien Britton - Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology, Toulouse

    Sébastien Britton is a CNRS researcher at IPBS-Toulouse and the forthcoming team leader of the Deciphering & Drugging DNA Repair (DDR) group. He obtained his PhD in Toulouse in 2009 on the study of the main human DNA Double-Strand Break repair pathway, Non Homologous End Joining (NHEJ). Then, he joined the Steve Jackson laboratory in Cambridge UK where he contributed to the discovery of Remodelin, a small molecule rescuing nuclear defects of laminopathic cells, and developed an original approach to monitor through high resolution imaging the recruitment of NHEJ proteins at individual DSBs. Then he joined the lab of Patrick Calsou in Toulouse in 2013 where he took advantage of this method to decipher some of the mechanisms antagonizing NHEJ at breaks whose DNA repair relies on another DNA repair pathway, Homologous Recombination. Recruited by the CNRS in 2015, he was awarded in 2018 the CNRS Bronze Medal for his contributions to the DNA repair field.
    His current research focuses on getting new insights into DNA damage response mechanisms in human cells and in using these insights to develop phenotypical and targeted screens to identify new small molecules affecting the response to DNA damage. This drug discovery efforts led his group to develop a new framework, combining chemoproteomics and functional genomics, to identify the mechanism of action of bioactive small molecules, related to the DNA damage response and beyond.
     
    Madalena Tarsounas

    Genome stability and tumourigenesis, University of Oxford
     
    Yves Pommier - Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda

    Dr. Pommier has been at the NIH since 1981. He is the Chief of the Developmental Therapeutics Branch and Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology, and member of the NCI Center for Cancer Research Drug Development Collaborative (DDC).
    Dr. Pommier is also Honorary Professor of the Shanghai Institute Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has received multiple Federal Technology Transfer Awards for his discoveries of DNA topoisomerase, HIV-1 integrase and cell cycle checkpoint inhibitors, and a NIH Merit Award for his role in elucidating the function of topoisomerases as targets for anticancer drugs.
    Three of his drugs are in clinical trial and his molecular pharmacology studies led to the clinical development of Yondelis and the PARP inhibitors. Dr. Pommier serves as Senior Editor for Cancer Research for the Translational Science section. He was elected Chair for 2004-2005 Gordon conferences on the Molecular Therapeutics of Cancer and for the 2016 and 2018 Gordon conferences on DNA Topoisomerases in Biology & Medicine.
    As the discoverer of the 1st HIV integrate inhibitors, he is founding organizer of the "International Conferences on Retroviral Integrase: Molecular Biology and Pharmacology" (1995, 2001, 2008, 2014 and 2017). Dr. Pommier received the "Paul Ehrlich lecture award" from the French Society of Therapeutic Chemistry in 2005 based on his discovery of the Interfacial inhibition concept. He has authored over 700 publications and holds over 30 patents for inhibitors of DNA topoisomerases, tyrosyl-DNA phosphodiesterase, checkpoint inhibitors and HIV-1 integrase inhibitors.
    He has mentored over 50 M.D. and Ph.D. post-doctoral fellows, Howard Hughes Medical Institute trainees, Ph.D. graduate students, and students who went into medical and scientific academic positions, pharmaceutical and editorial careers. Dr. Pommier was elected fellow of the AAAS in 2017.
    Fabrice André - Gustave Roussy, Villejuif

    Fabrice André, MD, PhD, received his MD in Grenoble in 2002, and a PhD in Biotechnology from Paris University in 2005.

    He is a past recipient of Young Investigator and Career Development awards from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and is currently Professor in the Department of Medical Oncology, Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France.

    His research work in the field of biomarkers and personalised therapies focuses on biomarker discovery, development of targeted agents and implementation of personalised medicine. His team includes 70 people working on basic sciences, bioinformatics, biotechnologies and clinical research. He is also leading phase I-III trials testing targeted agents in the field of breast cancer and large national trials testing implementation of high throughput technologies in the health care system.

    Professor André has published more than 200 peer reviewed papers, including papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Nature Medicine, Science, Lancet Oncology and Journal of Clinical Oncology, either as main or co-author.

    Professor André is chairman of the biomarker group at UNICANCER (French cooperative group) and was a member of several scientific committees for international meetings, including SABCS, AACR, ECCO, ESMO, and IMPAKT.

    Professor André has been a member of the Annals of Oncology Editorial Board (2010-2013), Associate Editor since 2014 and in September 2017 became Editor-in- Chief.

    He has been a member of the ESMO Educational Committee since 2009, he was coordinator (2012-2014) and member (since 2015) of the ESMO Breast Cancer Faculty. Professor André was also a member of the ESMO Cancer Research Faculty, 2012-2014; and is currently chair of the ESMO Translational Research and Precision Medicine Working Group.
    Julie Guillermet-Guibert - Cancer Research Center of Toulouse (CRCT)

    Julie Guillermet-Guibert, team leader of SigDYN is an Inserm Researcher since 2009.

    The question underlying the following matter, "Which are the distinctive features of cancer cell signalling in physiological conditions and how can we use this knowledge for therapy?", has been the driving force in her career. After obtaining her PhD in 2005, Julie decided to continue her training in UK under the supervision of Prof. Bart Vanhaesebroeck, first in Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research and later in Queen Mary University London (London).

    During this period, Julie strengthened her knowledge of the biological basis of cell signalling and the utilization of mouse models to mimic a pharmacological intervention. She joined Inserm in 2009 as a permanent researcher with the main objective of studying the unique biological features of cancer cell signalling first in vivo, then modelled ex vivo with an emphasis on the specific pancreatic and ovarian biology.

    She was awarded an Habilitation by the University Paul Sabatier - Toulouse - in 2015 and then a Jean-Marie Lehn Excellence Prize in 2018 for her work towards a better understanding of resistance to signal-targeted therapies in pancreatic cancer.
    Jean-Christophe Marine - VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology, Leuven

    Jean-Christophe Marine obtained his PhD from the University of Liège, (Belgium, 1996), and was a Howard Hugues Medical Institute Fellow at the St Jude Children's Research Hospital (Memphis, USA, 1996-99). He was a Marie Curie Fellow at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO, Milan, Italy, 2000-2003).

    He became a junior VIB Group leader in 2004 at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and moved his laboratory to the University of Leuven (KULeuven) in 2010 where he is now Professor, senior VIB group leader and Director of the VIB center for Cancer Biology. He received several national and international prizes, including the EMBO Young Investigator award in 2006, for his work on p53 modifiers.

    His interests focus on the mechanisms by which cancer-specific non-mutational (i.e. epigenetic and (post-)transcriptional) events modulate tumor initiation, progression and therapy outcome.

    Our laboratory has recently developed a growing interest in several aspects of melanoma biology, and in particular, in the identification of melanoma initiating cells and the mechanisms that contribute to early tumor development, emergence of inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity and therapy resistance.

     
    Nikhil C. Munshi - Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston


    Nikhil C. Munshi, MD is the Kraft Family Chair and Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and the Director of Basic and Correlative Science, and Associate Director of the Jerome Lipper Myeloma Center at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He is an attending physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Munshi received his medical degree from the S.S.G. Hospital and M.S. University, Baroda India. He completed a Research Fellowship in Medical Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center in Baltimore, Maryland, and a clinical fellowship in hematology/oncology at the Indiana University Medical Center. Prior to joining Dana Farber, Dr. Munshi was Professor of Medicine and Director of the Clinical Gene Transduction Laboratory at the University of Arkansas.
     
    Dr. Munshi's research focus spans both basic sciences to understand genomic changes in myeloma and elucidate molecular mechanisms driving the genomic instability in cancer, to translational approaches directed at improving diagnosis and prognosis as well as therapeutics. Dr Munshi’s clinical interests include CAR T-cell therapy in multiple myeloma and developing novel targeted therapeutics including novel antigen-directed and immune effector cell therapy/vaccine approaches.
     
    He has over 500 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. Dr Munshi has mentored over 70 junior faculty, post-doctoral fellows, medical residents, as well as medical and undergraduate students. A number of them are now independent scientists, physicians, and professionals. His grant support has included Program Project and SPORE grants from National Institutes of Health, and VA Research grants. He is the current President of the International Myeloma Society. He has received number of Awards including a Leukemia Society of America Scholar in Translational Research Award, the Dr. B.C. Roy National Award by the president of India in 2016 and the prestigious “Waldenstrom’s Award” for Most Distinguished Lifetime Achievement in Myeloma Research in 2013.
     
     

    Jean-Jacques Fournié

    Cancer Research Center of Toulouse (CRCT)


     
    Marina Konopleva - Department of Leukemia, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston

    I am a Physician-Scientist, Professor, and active member of the clinical faculty in the Departments of Leukemia and Stem Cell Transplantation. My laboratory is studying novel agents in acute myeloid and lymphocytic leukemias, focusing on BCL-2 targeting and agents targeting leukemic microenvironment and metabolism. I have extended my research to include clinical translational investigations and have developed clinical trials based on laboratory discoveries. These include BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax, inhibitor of oxidative phosphorylation, CXCR4 inhibitors, AKT and mTOR inhibitors and hypoxia-activated prodrugs. I have also been an active mentor to trainees including undergraduate, medical and graduate students, post-doctoral fellows who have trained under my direction in support of my various laboratory grants and projects.
     
    Christian Frezza - MRC Cancer Unit, University of Cambridge
     
    Dr. Christian Frezza is Programme leader at the MRC Cancer Unit, Cambridge Cancer Center, at the University of Cambridge, UK. He studied Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Padova, Italy, and gained his MSc in 2002, after a period of research on mitochondrial toxicity induced by photoactivable anticancer drugs. Christian then joined the laboratory of Luca Scorrano in Padova to start a PhD on mitochondrial dynamics and apoptosis. In 2008, he moved to the Beatson Institute of Cancer Research in Glasgow as recipient of an EMBO Long Term Fellowship, where he investigated the role of mitochondrial defects in tumorigenesis. He moved to the MRC Cancer Unit in 2012 as tenure track Group Leader and became a Programme Leader in 2017. His laboratory is mainly interested in investigating the emerging connection between cancer and metabolism, with a particular focus on mitochondrial metabolism. By using a combination of biochemistry, metabolomics, and systems biology he investigates the role of altered metabolism in cancer with the aim to understand how metabolic transformation regulates the process of tumorigenesis. His aim is to exploit these findings to establish novel therapeutic strategies and diagnostic tools for cancer.
    Laurent Le Cam - Institut de Recherche en Cancérologie de Montpellier (IRCM), Montpellier

    Laurent Le Cam is a research director at INSERM and a group leader at the Institut de Cancérologie de Montpellier since 2008. He initially studied different mechanisms driving cell proliferation, in particular those related to the activity of cyclins and cyclin-dependent-kinases (CDKs), first in Montpellier as a PhD student at the Institut de Génétique Moléculaire de Montpellier in Dr. C. Sardet's group, and then as a post-doc in Pr Sicinski's laboratory at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. After realizing that many cell cycle regulators he was studying also control cell metabolism, he decided to move to the field of onco-metabolism which is currently the main focus of his laboratory. More specifically, L. Le Cam's team is interested in new regulatory mechanisms of the p53 pathway, a tumor suppressor pathway that plays essential roles in carcinogenesis as well as in several human developmental syndromes. In the past years, his laboratory identified atypical functions of several key components of the p53 pathway (p53, E4F1 and MDM2) in cellular metabolism and demonstrated that these metabolic networks are implicated not only in carcinogenesis but are also important for normal tissue homeostasis.