Preliminary Programme

10.00

Coffee (Great Hall) and Registration (Council Room)

10.30

Introduction and Welcome (Senate Chamber)

Session 1: Focus on live tissue cultures and bioengineering

10.35

Invited speaker - Gareth Miles (Leicester)

Patient-Derived Explants (PDEs) as a preclinical platform for predicting patient responses to advanced anti-cancer therapies.

11.05

Invited speaker - Eric O’Neill (Oxford)

Human Tumour Avatars to elucidate the role of NK cells in pancreatic cancer responses

11.35

Invited speaker - Darryl Overby (Imperial)

Perfusable Tumour-on-Chip Models of Human Cancer

12.05

Talk selected from abstracts 1

12.20

Talk selected from abstracts 2

12.35

Lunch and poster viewing
 

Session 2: Focus on primary cells/organoids

14.00

Invited speaker – Paloma Ordonez-Moran (Nottingham)

Advanced 3D in vitro niches reveal how colon cancer cells acquire adaptive plasticity and chemoresistance

14.30

Invited speaker - Chris Tape (University College London)

Single-cell Phenoscaping of Tumour Microenvironment Organoids

15.00

Invited speaker. David Fernandez-Antoran (Cambridge)

Human epithelioids provide new insights into tumour evolution during clinical therapies

15.30

Talk selected from abstracts 3

15.45

Talk selected from abstracts 4

16.00

Refreshment Break

Session 3:  Personalised therapies now and in the future

16.30

Keynote Speaker - Daniela Thommen (NKI)

Ex vivo tumor fragments as precision medicine tools to personalize cancer immunotherapy

17.15

Q&A session. ‘What is the requirement for pre-clinical models?’ Open floor discussion and closing remarks to include representatives from UKRI, NC3Rs, regulators & industry: Chaired by Marion MacFarlane (MRC Cambridge)

18.00

Drinks Reception

Networking and Poster viewing

Session 1:  Welcome and keynote

8.55

Introduction and welcome

9.00

Keynote Speaker: Peter Friedl (Netherlands)

Enhancing CTL effector function and cooperation in the tumor microenvironment

Session 2: Spatial Mapping of the TME  I

9.45

Invited speaker - Ramanuj das Gupta (Glasgow)

Interrogating ecosystems of chronic disease and cancer “in time and space”

10.15

Invited speaker - Raza Ali (Cambridge)

Spatial predictors of response to neoadjuvant IO therapy

10.45

Refreshment Break

Session 3: Spatial Mapping of the TME  II

11.15

Invited speaker- Sheeba Irshad (Kings College London)

Spatial Reprogramming of Immune Surveillance in Breast Cancer: From Immune Control to Immune Failure

11.45

Talk selected from abstracts-1

12.00

Talk selected from abstracts-2

12.15-12.45

Sponsored Workshop

12.45

Lunch and Posters

Session 4: Bioengineering

14.00

Invited speaker - Luca Urbani (Kings College London)

Extracellular matrix signatures in primary colorectal and hepatobiliary tumours 

14.30

Invited speaker – Yuqi Shen (Oxford)

A multi-niche human bone marrow organoid model for blood cancer research and therapeutic development

15.00

Talk selected from abstracts-3

15.00

Talk selected from abstracts-4

15.30

Refreshment Break

Session 5:  Hormonal regulation

16.00

Invited speaker – Colinda Scheele (KU Leuven, Belgium)

How hormonal remodelling drives the initiation of breast cancer

16.30

Flash talks – 3 min thesis- selected from abstracts

17.00

Talk selected from abstracts-5

17.15

Talk selected from abstracts-6
 

17.30

 Networking time

18.30

Drinks Reception in the Council room and foyer followed by the Conference Dinner in the Senate Chamber (opening onto lakeside)

9.00

Keynote Speaker

Douglas Hanahan (Switzerland)

Intersections of cancer neuroscience and immunosuppression in the TME, and their hallmark co-targeting

Session 6:  Host-tumour interactions

9.45

Invited speaker - Evangelos Giampazolias (Manchester)

2025 BACR/AstraZeneca Young Scientist Frank Rose Award Winner

Decoding host-microbiome interactions in cancer immunity. Killing cancer with a gut instinct

10.15

Talk selected from abstracts-7

10.30

 Talk selected from abstracts-8

10.45

Refreshment break

Session 7:  Metastatic mechanisms

11.30

Invited speaker – Jacky Goetz (CRBS, France)

Mechanisms (inc. EVs) and mechanics of tumour metastasis and dissemination

12.00

Invited speaker - Victoria Sanz-Moreno, (ICR London)

Stress Signals in the Tumour Microenvironment: Physical and Chemical Inducers of Metastasis

12.30

Talk selected from abstract - 9

12.45

Talk selected from abstract - 10

13.00

Lunch and Poster Session

14.30

 Invited Patient perspective: Imogen Westwood and Andy Westwood; An everyday tale of teenage cancer.

Session 8: Into the clinic

15.10

Invited speaker. Gareth Thomas (Southampton)

Exploiting Fibroblast Plasticity for Cancer Therapy

15.40

Invited speaker. Katherine Cook (Scancell Nottingham)

Using antibodies to improving T cell penetration into the tumour microenvironment

16.10

Closing Remarks/Poster Prize and meeting end.