Dr. Anita Sveen is a project group leader in computational oncology at the Department of Molecular Oncology, Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital. She is also an associate professor at the Institute for Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo.

Dr. Sveen’s research focuses on new treatment concepts for patients with colorectal cancer, with the goals to decipher spatio-temporal tumor heterogeneity and its clinical relevance, and predict response and resistance to cancer treatments. Her project group is responsible for genomics, transcriptomics and pharmacogenomics in a translational research program. Through this work, Dr. Sveen has built strong interdisciplinary competence in molecular oncology and computational approaches to tumor heterogeneity and treatment prediction.

The scientific contributions of Dr. Sveen has earned her several awards, including Dr. Ragnar Mørk's Prize for cancer research in 2021, the Researcher-of-the-Year prize from the leadership at ICR in 2020, and the 2019 Oslo University Hospital Young Researcher Award. Dr. Sveen was also an invited speaker at the AACR special conference on colorectal cancer in 2022.

Berend Snijder is a Swiss National Science Foundation professor at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zürich. He leads a research group investigating the basic principles of cellular behavior and processes surrounding cancer and immunology. His group has developed and applied new methods for ex vivo quantitative cell biology and systems biology, using both experimental and computational approaches. His work has resulted in multiple first –and corresponding-author publications in Nature, Cell, and other high-impact journals, as well as an ERC starting grant and the SNF-Förderungsprofessur from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

He is also a co-founder of Allcyte GmbH, a biotech company that leverages AI and singe-cell technologies to discover and optimize novel drug candidates for oncology and Immunology. In 2021, Allcyte was acquired by Exscientia Ltd, a leading AI drug discovery company.

Douglas Hanahan is a professor and Director Emeritus at the Institute for Experimental Cancer Research at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. He received his bachelor’s degree in Physics from MIT (1976), and a Ph.D. in Biophysics from Harvard (1983).

He worked at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York (1978-88) initially as a graduate student and then as a group leader. From 1988-2010 he was on the faculty of the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics at UCSF in San Francisco. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2007), the Institute of Medicine (USA) (2008), the US National Academy of Science (2009), and EMBO (2010). In 2011, Prof. Hanahan received an honorary degree from the University of Dundee (UK).

He published his landmark paper on the Hallmarks of Cancer with Robert Weinberg in 2000, which was updated in 2011 and again in 2022.

The Hanahan group’s research is centred on the use of genetically engineered mouse models to study tumour development, growth and malignant progression. They are specifically interested in mechanisms and barriers in the tumour microenvironment that block T cell immunotherapy of solid tumours and the manipulation of cellular recycling to disrupt tumour growth and progression.

Erik Sahai PhD is a Principal Group Leader and Assistant Research Director at The Francis Crick Institute in London. He heads the Tumour Cell Biology laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London.

​

Dr Sahai obtained his PhD with Richard Treisman in London studying RhoGTPases and their effectors. He then carried out post-doctoral work in both London (Chris Marshall) and New York (John Condeelis). Following this training, Erik set up his own group at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute in 2004 and then transferred to the Francis Crick Institute in 2015. He was  awarded the Hooke Medal and is a member of EMBO, the European Academy of Cancer Sciences, and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is president elect of the Metastasis Research Society
 

His research is focused on the spread of cancer through the body and responses to cancer therapy. His group is interested in stromal fibroblasts and their interplay with both tumour and immune cells. To study these problems his group uses a wide range of techniques from computational modelling of cell migration, through conventional cell and molecular biology, to intravital imaging of mouse tumours and live analysis of patient derived material.
Research Interests: tumour microenvironment, optical imaging, cell-cell communication, metastasis, therapy failure and cancer evolution

https://www.crick.ac.uk/research/labs/erik-sahai
https://twitter.com/eriksahailab

Gillian Griffiths is Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology at the University of Cambridge and is the Director of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research. She obtained her bachelors degree in Immunology from University College London and her PhD from MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge in the lab of Prof. César Milstein. She holds a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship and is a Fellow at King's College, Cambridge. Prof Griffiths was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2013 and was awarded the Buchanan Medal of the Royal Society in 2019.

Professor Griffiths is a cell biologist and immunologist who was one of the first to show that immune cells have specialised mechanisms of secretion. Her group initially generated cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) from patients with different genetic mutations, and used biochemical, molecular and high-resolution imaging approaches to identify proteins and mechanisms that control lysosome generation and protein secretion. Furthermore, her work has identified a new and unexpected role for the centrosome in exocytosis, and revealed that centrosome docking at the plasma membrane provides a focal point for exocytosis and endocytosis.

Her group is currently using protein tagging and CRISPR technology to further probe CTL function. This is highly relevant in combating cancer as new immunotherapies are focused on harnessing the cytotoxic potential of these cells to combat cancer.

Johanna Ivaska is a K Albin Johansson Professor at the University of Turku, Finland. She currently leads the “Cell Adhesion and Cancer” group at the University of Turku Bioscience Centre.

The research interest of Johanna Ivaska and her research group is in understanding how integrins contribute to processes that promote cancer progression, including cell migration, invasion and tumour-stroma crosstalk. In the last years, she has focused on discovering novel regulators of integrin activity and integrin traffic, and delineating the mechanisms by which cancer cells sense their microenvironment. Current work includes investigating how integrin-mediated adhesions contribute to cancer cell migration and metastasis, identifying new regulators of integrin activity and endo/exocytic traffic, and studying integrin mechanosensing.

In 2024, Ivaska received an ERC Advanced Grant to study how the natural biological limits of a healthy body prevent or contribute to the spread of cancer (the BorderControl project). She is also a EMBO Council member and an elected member of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology section of Academia Europaea, as of 2023.

Johanna Olweus is Professor at the University of Oslo and Head of Department of Cancer Immunology, Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital. She is an MD, PhD by training (University of Bergen) with a medical specialty in clinical immunology. Her training in transplantation immunology inspired her to work towards the goal of utilizing the powerful immune responses of graft-versus-tumor-reactivity and graft rejection to reject cancer cells in a targeted way. Olweus is pursuing this concept in her ERC Consolidator Grant project “Outsource”. Olweus was Director of the K.G. Jebsen Center for Cancer Immunotherapy 2013-19. The ambition to develop therapeutic TCRs directed at novel targets is pursued further in the newly opened (Research Council of Norway) Center of Excellence PRIMA – the PRecision Immunotherapy Alliance (2023 – 2033), for which Olweus is Director.

Dr. Karuna Ganesh is  an Assistant Member and Medical Oncologist, Molecular Pharmacology program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She obtained her MD, PhD at the University of Cambridge, followed by residencies at Harvard Medical School and fellowships at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre.

The Ganesh lab focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie the emergence of regenerative plasticity during metastasis.  They employ cutting edge patient-derived organoid and mouse models of colorectal cancer, transcriptomic, epigenomic and single cell approaches, and mechanistic studies to: (1) elucidate how tumor invasion and dissemination induce phenotypic plasticity enabling the emergence of pro-metastatic regenerative traits (2) dissect the role of stromal cells, including immune cells, in promoting and constraining MetSC plasticity (3) define key signaling nodes that drive MetSC plasticity and develop therapeutic strategies for targeting such vulnerabilities and (4) collaborate with clinicians to understand mechanisms of therapy resistance in metastasis.

Manuel R. Teixeira is the Head of the Department of Laboratory Genetics at the Portuguese Oncology Institute of Porto (IPO Porto) and a Guest Full Professor at the School of Medicine and Biological Sciences (ICBAS) of the University of Porto. He received his medical degree from ICBAS-UP and his PhD (Dr Med) in Medical Genetics at the University of Oslo, after performing his doctoral studies at the Department of Medical Genetics of Odense University Hospital in 1993-1994 and then at the Department of Genetics at the Institute for Cancer Research, The Norwegian Radium Hospital in 1994-1997, under the supervision of Prof. Sverre Heim. He also undertook a Norwegian Cancer Society funded postdoctoral position in 1998-2000.

His research interests are pursued as the coordinator of the Cancer Genetics Group of IPO Porto Research Center (CI-IPOP), a multidisciplinary research group that includes medical doctors, pharmacists, biochemists, and biologists, all specialists in cancer genetics. His research group aims to study the interplay between inherited cancer predisposition and the pattern of acquired genetic alterations that give rise to cancer, in order to understand the mechanisms of tumor initiation and progression and their role in therapy response and resistance. Over the years his group has discovered several novel gene fusions in different malignant diseases, as well as several founder germline variants associated with cancer predisposition. Recently, his group has discovered novel genes involved in prostate cancer predisposition, especially for early-onset and/or familial disease.

Olli Kallioniemi is the director of the Science for Life Laboratory (www.SciLifeLab.se), a national infrastructure for life sciences in Sweden. He is also a professor in Molecular Precision Medicine at the Karolinska Institutet (2015-present) and he directs the national SciLifeLab-Wallenberg program on Data-Driven Life Science (DDLS).

Dr Kallioniemi was previously the founding director of FIMM – the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland at the University of Helsinki, as part of the Nordic EMBL partnership in Molecular Medicine (2007-2015). He is a member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), European Academy of Cancer Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

His group uses ex vivo drug efficacy testing on patient-derived cells along with –omics profiling to develop approaches that will personalize treatment, aid in prioritizing drugs for clinical testing, provide for intelligent selection of drug combinations and improve treatment outcomes for patients.

Per Eystein Lønning (born 1953) graduated from the University of Bergen (MD) in 1979. He became certified as a specialist in clinical oncology and radiotherapy in 1988, and received his PhD in cancer research in 1989. In 1990 he became consultant in oncology and head of the breast cancer section at the Department of Clinical Oncology, Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen. In 1992 he became professor at the University of Bergen.

His research activity has mainly focused on translation research in breast cancer including genomic work with emphasis on the mechanisms of resistance to chemotherapy and metastatic propagation. This work has involved other cancer forms, like colorectal cancer and melanoma in addition to breast cancer.  During the recent years he has been working on projects identifying genetic and epigenetic cancer risk mechanisms.

In autumn 2023 he left his university position for partial retirement and work as senior consultant at the Department of Oncology. He has authored about 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals, with about 41.500 citations and an H-score of 67 in the Web of Science Core Base.

Ragnhild A. Lothe is Head of Department of Molecular Oncology at the Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital, and Professor at the Institute for Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo. Dr. Lothe received her PhD in cancer genetics in 1992. During the last ten years she has been co-Director for the CoE – Cancer Biomedicine and Director for a Centre for Colorectal Cancer Research. Her main research interests are translational studies of primary and metastatic colorectal cancers, and the multidisciplinary colorectal cancer research program led by Lothe was appointed strategic research area at Oslo University Hospital in two consecutive periods. Her research team is the core lab for multimodal experimental diagnostics for this cancer type, including in a clinical trial of ex vivo pharmacogenomics-guided treatment using patient-derived tumor organoids. She received King Olav V’s Prize for Cancer Research in 2007. She is member of The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and Honorary member of the European Association for Cancer Research.

Reuven Agami is the head of the Division of Oncogenomics at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, a professor at the Molecular Genetics Department at the Erasmus MC Rotterdam, and an Oncode Institute member. As an independent researcher, Agami has made unique contributions to the RNA and cancer genetics fields. From inventing novel technologies, such as pSUPER, the first genetic tool to knock down genes using RNAi, through studies on microRNAs, RNA binding proteins, alternative mRNA isoforms, transcriptional enhancers, and mRNA translation. His current work is focused on characterizing and utilizing aberrant protein production in cancer for therapy. During his career, Agami won several prizes and awards, including the EMBO fellowship and membership, the NKI-AvL Prize, the Dr. Joseph Steiner Prize, the ESCI Prize for Basic/Translational Research, as well as the European Young Investigator (EURYI), the ERC-Starting and the ERC-Advanced Awards. In 2024, Agami received an ERC advanced Grant (entitled pepTalks) to study the causes of consequences of aberrant protein production. For these achievements, Agami was recently elected as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Sibylle Loibl is an associate professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the Goethe University of Frankfurt, chair of the German Breast Group and the Chief Executive Officer of the GBG Forschungs GmbH.

Dr. Loibl devotes most of her time to clinical research within the German Breast Group and clinical work at the Centre for Haematology and Oncology Bethanien, and has been involved in conducting and managing a significant number of national and international practice-changing clinical trials. She also developed the translational research division within the GBG and has led numerous translational projects as well as research projects founded by the EU Commission.  Through this work, Dr. Loibl has gained international renommée for her research in neoadjuvant breast cancer, breast cancer during pregnancy and breast cancer in young women.

In 2022, Dr. Loibl received the ESMO Breast Cancer Award for her exceptional contribution to clinical research in breast cancer, especially for furthering understanding about breast cancer in pregnancy and the wider treatment-related fertility problems of young women with this disease. Dr. Loibl is a member of numerous national and international organizations such as ASCO, ESMO, EORTC-TRAFO and ESGO. She has co-authored more than 400 original and peer-reviewed articles and scientific papers, as well as 29 books or book chapters.

Verena Jendrossek is Full Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Acting Chair of the Institute of Cell Biology (Cancer Research), IFZ, at the University Hospital Essen, and Vice-director of the West-German Cancer Center (CCC-WTZ) in Essen, Germany. Professor Jendrossek heads the Molecular Cell Biology Group at the IFZ with focus on Experimental Radiation Oncology and is the speaker of a Research Training Group GRK2762 on “Heterogeneity, plasticity and dynamics in radiation responses“ recently funded by the German Research Association (DFG) (2022-2027).

Professor Jendrossek studied Pharmacy and Cell Biology at the Julius-Maximilians University in Würzburg and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. She earned her PhD from the Georg-August University in Göttingen (with Prof. Manfred Gahr) and her State Doctorate in Physiology from the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen. She entered the field of Molecular Radiation Biology and Experimental Oncology in 2001 and moved to Essen in 2007.
The research of her lab focuses on mechanisms that determine intrinsic, microenvironment-mediated, or adaptive radiation resistance of cancer cells and radiation-induced normal tissue toxicity and on developing appropriate methods and models for this research. Her work contributed to the discovery of mechanisms driving oncogene- or hypoxia-mediated radiation resistance. Recent work revealed adverse roles of an altered cell metabolism for intrinsic and adaptive radiation resistance of cancer cells and some of the underlying mechanisms. Furthermore, the group identified pathogenic roles of radiation-induced signaling and immune changes in the normal lung tissue for radiation-induced adverse pulmonary effects and revealed therapeutic strategies for their overcoming. Recently, the group became interested in biological differences between proton and photon irradiation and in the contribution of tumour and host heterogeneity for heterogeneity in radiotherapy responses and therapy outcome. Overall goal is to define biomarkers suited to predict individual radiosensitivity of tumors and patients, and to develop effective strategies using molecularly tailored treatments or immunotherapy approaches to enlarge the therapeutic window of radiotherapy.