CRUK Funded Researchers Attend the American Association of Cancer Research 2025
The AACR Annual Meeting 2025 is being held this April 25th to 30th at McCormick Place Convention Center
Chicago, Illinois. The theme is “Unifying Cancer Science and Medicine: A Continuum of Innovation for Impact” and a number of researchers from the Institute and the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre will be presenting there.
The AACR Annual Meeting allows scientists, clinicians, other health care professionals, survivors, patients, and advocates to gather, share and discuss the latest breakthroughs in cancer research. Covering a wide range of topics – from population science and prevention; to cancer biology, translational, and clinical studies; to survivorship and advocacy – the AACR Annual Meeting is an opportunity to showcase cutting-edge cancer science and medicine.
(For those attending online, the conference is in Chicago, USA so the time difference is GMT-5)
Professor Rob Bristow, head of our Translational Oncogenomics group, and director of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, will be chairing the “Presidential Select Symposium: Leveraging Science to Reduce the Cancer Burden Worldwide” on Mon 28th 10:15am -12pm
This major symposium includes the important themes of Cancer Disparities, Cancer Prevention and Early Detection (Interception), experiences of Survivorship, and insights from a Global Health perspective.
AACR Weblink: https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/20273/session/13
Santiago Zelenay, who leads our Cancer Inflammation and Immunity group, will be giving a presentation entitled “The COX-2/PGE2 axis: a dominant pathway underlying cancer immune evasion” on Mon 28th 1pm-1.20pm as part of the Session SY17 on “Overcoming the Tumor Suppressive Role of the Innate Immune System within the Tumor Microenvironment.”
AACR Weblink: https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/20273/presentation/1245
Also on Monday 28th 5pm-5.45pm, Prof Caroline Dive, our Interim Director, Director of the aligned Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre, and Senior Group Leader, jointly running the Small Cell Lung Cancer Biology group with Kathryn Simpson will be presenting a “Meet the Expert” session on “Studying Metastasis in Small Cell Lung Cancer”.
AACR Weblink: https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/20273/session/600
In this session, Professor Dive will provide an overview of her group’s studies on Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC) metastasis using CDX models generated from patient circulating tumor cells. She will describe the functional plasticity of SCLC cells and the potential role of vasculogenic mimicry in the metastatic cascade. Additionally, the session will cover metastatic tropism, focusing on CDX models that primarily disseminate to the liver or brain, as well as the role of molecular subtypes, including the newly discovered ATOH1 subtype.
In addition, Caroline has been announced as a Fellow of the AACR Academy Class of 2025, for “celebrated research in small cell lung cancer, including the development of circulating tumor cell-derived explant models that have advanced the understanding of tumor biology, thereby accelerating biomarker discovery and reducing the need for invasive biopsies, and for transformative studies involving the use of liquid biopsies to monitor tumor evolution.”
Those attending AACR who would like to learn more about Caroline’s career, and get advice on their own career progression, can also attend the Personalized Career Conversations on April 26, 2025, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
AACR Weblink: https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/20273/session/181
Poster Presentations
A number of Institute and NBC researchers are presenting or co-presenting their work during the poster sessions at AACR. These are also accessible to attendees via the e-poster platform.
- Work from the Nucleic Acids Biomarkers team at the National Biomarker Centre will be presented in Session PO.CL01.04 – Liquid Biopsy: Circulating Nucleic Acids 2
4560 / 13 – “Use of ctDNA fragmentomics as a predictive biomarker in locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer” - Research from Prof Caroline Dive and her team is presented in Session PO.BCS01.15 – Tumor Subtypes and Biomarker Discovery 1108 / 15 – “Tissue and circulating DNA methylation profiling can recapitulate SCLC heterogeneity to enable identification of new biomarkers of clinical relevance”
Many of our partners and collaborators from the University of Manchester, the Christie NHS Trust and the Manchester Cancer Research Centre are also attending and presenting. The AACR website includes a powerful itinerary planner with a comprehensive search engine – https://www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/20273 – which allows you to search by name, title and organisation. There is also a conference app available for download, and there will be lots more coverage on social media using the hashtag #AACR25.
We wish all the attendees and participants well, and look forward to hearing the great news stories and insights that come from this important gathering.
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