Judith Campisi, PhD

Professor

Buck Institute for Research on Aging

“Aging and cancer: Rival demons or reluctant allies?”

Judith Campisi received a PhD in biochemistry from the State University of New York Stony Brook, and postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. In 1984, she joined the Boston University Medical School faculty as Assistant and Associate Professor, then moved to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as Senior Scientist in 1991. In 2002, she started a second laboratory at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, where she is Professor.  

At both institutions, Campisi established a broad program to understand the relationship between aging and disease, with an emphasis on how cellular senescence promotes inflammation, cancer and degenerative diseases. Her laboratory made pioneering discoveries in these areas, and continues to challenge and alter existing paradigms. She has several long-standing national and international collaborations, and mentors many students and fellows.  

Campisi received numerous awards, including MERIT awards from the National Institute on Aging, and awards from the AlliedSignal Corporation, Gerontological Society of America and American Federation for Aging Research, the Longevity prize from the IPSEN Foundation, and the first international Olav Thon Foundation prize. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Association for Cancer Research, and the US National Academy of Sciences. She serves on numerous national and international editorial and scientific advisory boards.  

Katherine Aird, PhD

Associate Professor

UPMC Hillman Cancer Center

University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine

“Surprising roles of p16 in senescence”

The Aird lab has two main areas of investigation: 1) mechanisms and pathological implications of cellular senescence; and 2) metabolic reprogramming during tumorigenesis in ovarian cancer and melanoma. More information can be found at: airdlab.com

Charles Swanton, MD PhD, FRCP, FMedSci, FAACR, FRS

Professor

Cancer Evolution and Genome Instability Laboratory

Francis Crick Institute

UCL Cancer Institute, London, UK

“Chromosomal instability and immune evasion in cancer evolution”

Charles completed his MDPhD training in 1999 at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories and Cancer Research UK clinician scientist/medical oncology training in 2008. Charles is a senior group leader of the Cancer Evolution and Genome Instability Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute  and combines his research with clinical duties at UCLH, as a thoracic oncologist, focussed on how tumours evolve over space and time. Charles research branched evolutionary histories of solid tumours, processes that drive cancer cell-to-cell variation in the form of new cancer mutations or chromosomal instabilities, and the impact of such cancer diversity on effective immune surveillance and clinical outcome. Charles is chief investigator of TRACERx, a lung cancer evolutionary study and the national PEACE autopsy program.

Charles was made Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in April 2011, appointed Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015, awarded the Napier Professor in Cancer by the Royal Society in 2016, appointed Cancer Research UK’s Chief Clinician in 2017, and elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018 and Fellow of the Academy of American Association for Cancer Research in 2020. Charles is an editorial board member of Cell, Plos Medicine, Cancer Discovery and Annals of Oncology and an advisory board member for Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology and Cancer Cell. In 2016 he co-founded Achilles Therapeutics, a UCL/CRUK/Francis Crick Institute spin-out company, assessing the efficacy of T cells targeting clonal neoantigens. 

Charles has been awarded several prizes including the Stand up to Cancer Translational Cancer Research Prize (2015), GlaxoSmithkline Biochemical Society Prize (2016), San Salvatore prize for Cancer Research (2017) and the Ellison-Cliffe Medal, Royal Society of Medicine (2017), recipient of the Gordon Hamilton Fairley Medal (2018), Massachusetts General Hospital, Jonathan Kraft Prize for Excellence in Cancer Research (May 2018), the ESMO Award for Translational Cancer Research (2019), Addario Lung Cancer Foundation Award and Lectureship, International Lung Cancer Congress (July 2020) and the Weizmann Institute Sergio Lambroso Award in Cancer Research (2021).

Michael Hoffman, PhD

Senior Scientist

Princess Margaret Cancer Centre

Associate Professor

Departments of Medical Biophysics and Computer Science

University of Toronto

“The ungracious guest: how the human papillomavirus (HPV) changes the local host epigenome and transcriptome to promote tumorigenesis”

Michael Hoffman creates predictive computational models to understand interactions between genome, epigenome, and phenotype in human cancers. He implemented the genome annotation method Segway, which simplifies interpretation of large multivariate genomic datasets, and was a linchpin of the NIH ENCODE Project analysis. He is a principal investigator at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Associate Professor in the Departments of Medical Biophysics and Computer Science, University of Toronto. He was named a CIHR New Investigator and has received several awards for his academic work, including the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, and the Ontario Early Researcher Award.

Alana Welm, PhD

Senior Director of Basic Science

Professor, Department of Oncological Sciences

University of Utah, School of Medicine

“Using patient-derived models for drug discovery and functional precision oncology in advanced breast cancer”

The research in Dr. Welm’s laboratory is focused on solving the problem of breast cancer metastasis using in vivo modeling of mouse and human breast cancers. Dr. Welm’s group discovered that the Ron kinase pathway is an important facilitator of breast cancer metastasis through its unique dual function in tumor cells and in resident macrophages. Current areas of research include (1) pre-clinical studies of various Ron inhibitors for treatment and prevention of metastatic breast cancer; (2) pre-clinical and early clinical studies of Ron/Met inhibitors in bone metastatic cancers; (3) discovering molecular mechanisms by which Ron kinases promote metastasis through cell-autonomous and non cell-autonomous pathways; and (4) refining “precision medicine†for metastatic breast cancer using functional assays in patient-derived breast tumor grafts and organoid models.

Alice Soragni, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery

University of California, Los Angeles

Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center

“Tumor organoids to model rare cancers for functional precision medicine application”

Recording note: Dr. Soragni’s presentation is not available.

Dr. Alice Soragni’s lab focuses on two major and overlapping areas of research. First, they investigate how protein aggregation affects cancer development and progression, with a special focus on p53 aggregation. They exploit protein aggregation as a therapeutic target by designing peptides that interfere with the process. Second, and in parallel, the lab focuses on developing clinically-relevant organoid models for cancer biology, as well as drug discovery and development applications. In particular, they establish tumor organoids from surgical specimens (patient-derived tumor organoids) and perform high-throughput drug screenings to individualize cancer therapy to each patient.

Ashani T. Weeraratna, PhD

Chair, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Bloomberg Distinguished Professor

Professor

Johns Hopkins University

“Age against the machine: How aging disrupts the homeostasis of cancer”

Shreya Raghavan., PhD

Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Texas A&M University

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Nanomedicine

Houston Methodist Research Institute

“A biomedical engineer’s perspective on primary and metastatic tumor microenvironments”

Marina Pasca di Magliano, PhD

Professor, Department of Surgery

University of Michigan Ann Arbor

“Cellular crosstalk in the pancreatic cancer microenvironment”

Madeleine Oudin, PhD

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Tufts University

“Roles of the extracellular matrix in chemoresistance”

Thomas Gajewski, MD, PhD

AbbVie Foundation Professor of Pathology

The University of Chicago

“Mechanisms of microbiome impacting cancer immunotherapy“

Ravid Straussman, MD, PhD

The Roel C. Buck Career Development Chair

Weizmann Institute of Science

“Characterizing the tumor microbiome and its effects on response to therapy“