2021 EACR Spring and Summer conferences: A Participant’s View

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Molecular Pathology Approach to Cancer
Job title: Medical student
Home institution: Ain-Shams University of Medicine, Cairo, Egypt
Research: In the progress of the world nowadays toward artificial intelligence (AI), new modalities of diagnosis and treatment have been proposed using AI. Many AI modalities have been trained and used in the diagnosis of tumors from their ability to match save a huge content of information and match findings together. Our topic was about using 3 of the most efficient world’s known AI modalities in our institution’s pathology labs to test their efficacy and provide both lesser error and better diagnosis.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

The personal highlight of the conference was the moment I saw our abstract and for the first moment being presented at a world class level where we brought our work from the shadow to the light and what light better than world known leading experts in the field, and the enriching discussion we have at our poster from which broaden my point of view toward approaching cancer research.  Also, when my other team member where discussing our work with a professor who we knew after that she was a pathology professor at UK, and she was so much interested in our work and offered collaboration so we can start a conjoint project. We changed contacts and waiting for a great collaboration.

Were there any social/networking highlights you want to tell us about? (e.g. you found a potential collaborator, or got to ask a question to a favourite speaker)

Yes, when we were able to get in contact with many leading experts in the field of cancer research, exchanged contacts as it was the astonishing first experience I have ever had. Being also interested in breast cancer I was able to see multiple posters regarding the newest treatments, approaches, discoveries, and theories in the field, and what attracts my attention a poster from also and Egyptian doctor yet works in Switzerland who find interesting way of how estrogenic receptors work and proposed a new treatment modality. We talked, and discussed a lot of topics, and the whole poster time passed without we notice.

How has the conference inspired you in your research? (e.g. inspiration from the people, lectures, attitudes or ideas you encountered)

Unique and beneficial Ideas were mentioned by pioneers in the cancer research at each poster discussing different aspects which really inspires me on how diverse and promising is cancer research. The huge amount of knowledge was not only concentrated in the poster presentations yet in the presentations given by professors, and doctors in which crucial and meaning topics were discussed. Being a member of EACR widen both my connections and my views toward new sides and fields in cancer research.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? What was it?

Yes, how organized it was and the Gather platform was remarkable. I would definitely tell about my great experience where I can virtually stand infront of my poster and start explaining and gaining feedback from great professors and doctors who never took a step backward in sharing their thoughts and giving their inputs. I liked the debate made by participants over some great topics, besides, I would like to tell my colleagues that the conference was the best virtual conference I have ever attended.

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Molecular Pathology Approach to Cancer
Job title: Research assistant fellow
Home institution: Rostov regional Bureau of Pathology, Russia
Research: In breast cancer, the amplification of Her2 gene is occurred in 15-20% of cases, leading to an increased expression of the Her2 protein. Tumor cells with high levels of Her2 have a more aggressive phenotype, but Her2 may not be expressed homogeneously among all cancer cells within the same specimen. Her2 heterogeneity can occur due to the presence of clones with different characteristics, and such molecular heterogeneity may explain resistance to anti-Her2 therapy. We are interested in HER2 intratumoral heterogeneity as an explanation for the development of resistance to anti-HER2 therapies in breast cancer.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

The diversity of topics discussed, covering many aspects of cancer progression and resistance to therapy, insights into tumor heterogeneity and discussions on translating genomic information into clinical decisions, really were highlights of the meeting for me. I also gained insights about innovations in the field of pathology, which I didn’t know much about. In particular, I want to mention digital image analysis and artificial intelligence (AI) technology that are expanding the possibilities of cancer research.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

This conference is very different from others because it was online-only meeting. Of course, I missed direct interaction with others participants, both formal and informal, which is pretty much what we expected when attending conferences. But I was extremely satisfied with science talks delivered by Zoom. The selection of speakers couldn’t be better. And there was so much discussion and questions following the talks!

How has the conference inspired you in your research? (e.g. inspiration from the people, lectures, attitudes or ideas you encountered)

I found the conference highly valuable – it allowed me to break out of my own research “bubble” and feeling myself as a part of cancer research community. I was inspired by speakers, because of their enthusiasm when presenting. Among them were Leeat Keren, Tamara Lotan and Inti Zlobec. Even though not everything that they presented related to my field of research, they managed to passionately explain what they do. It was a pleasure to listen to their talks, because it was a lesson for me how to give an inspiring talk, when presenting your own research.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? What was it?

I was particularly impressed with Mark Rubin’s talk about lineage plasticity as a fundamental cause of treatment-resistance in prostate and lung cancers. It is a very interesting mechanism of tumour progression, that allows cancer cells to change appearance and evade therapy and I told everyone in my lab about it. My colleagues were very interested also in the data presented by Tamara Lotan. We discussed on our lab meeting her research on detection of DNA repair deficiency in prostate cancer.  Everybody was amazed by the possibility to identify patients with DNA deficiency in a simple way (IHC, not NGS!).

Is there anything else you’d like to mention? Tell us about it here

I would like to thank the scientific committee, the conference organizers and all of the speakers, for making the extremely well-organized and uniformly high-quality meeting.

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Molecular Pathology Approach to Cancer
Job title: Medical student
Home institution: Ain-Shams University of Medicine, Cairo, Egypt
Research: In the progress of the world nowadays toward artificial intelligence (AI), new modalities of diagnosis and treatment have been proposed using AI. Many AI modalities have been trained and used in the diagnosis of tumors from their ability to match save a huge content of information and match findings together. Our topic was about using 3 of the most efficient world’s known AI modalities in our institution’s pathology labs to test their efficacy and provide both lesser error and better diagnosis.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

The moment I saw our abstract and for the first moment being presented at a world class level was the personal highlight of the conference, where we brought our work to the light.  Also, when I was discussing our work with a professor from different aspects of how it will benefit the patients from lesser error and providing faster and more accurate diagnosis who we knew after that she was a pathology professor at UK, and she was so much interested in our work and offered collaboration. We changed contacts and waiting for a great collaboration.

Were there any social/networking highlights you want to tell us about? (e.g. you found a potential collaborator, or got to ask a question to a favourite speaker)

Yes, when we were able to get in contact with many leading experts in the field of cancer research, exchanged contacts as it was the astonishing first experience I have ever had. Breast cancer has been of interest to me so finding many posters related to breast cancer in different aspects from different sides of the world was the real enriching experience I would like to share with others especially talking about an Egyptian too scientist who is working Switzerland in an interesting topic regarding estrogenic receptors in breast cancer and multiple ways to approach and control them.

How has the conference inspired you in your research? (e.g. inspiration from the people, lectures, attitudes or ideas you encountered)

It has greatly inspired me, watching all those great participants and pioneers in their fields, Unique and beneficial Ideas were mentioned in each poster. I encountered a great topic about drugs combinations used in treatment of breast cancer, which is the topic of my poster and I saw of it a great collaboration opportunity and a point in which my center and country will sure benefit from it a lot. Lectures were concentrated with so many important and crucial info in the field of cancer. I greatly appreciate being a member of EACR.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? What was it?

Yes, how organized it was and the Gather platform was amazing. I liked how we joined in front posters to talk about them or hear high yield conversations with so many valuable information and know more the cancer research and its different aspects. I liked the debate made by participants over some great topics; moreover, I would like to tell my colleagues that the conference was the best virtual conference I have ever attended.

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Bioinformatics in Cancer
Job title: PhD student
Home institution: Institute of Oncology and Radiology of Serbia, Serbia
Research: Rectal cancer is one of leading cause of death worldwide. Standard therapy for patient with locally advanced rectal cancer is neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy. During the treatment some of the patient’s response well to therapy while the other group of patients doesn’t. The main goal of my research is to identify biomarkers which will predict the response to therapy. This will give us opportunity to select patients who will experience benefits of therapy, while the other group of patients will not be exposed to exhausting therapy that will not benefit them.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

The conference Bioinformatics in Cancer, was very interesting for me in many ways. Firstly, it was the first conference where I presented a poster. I’m a first year PhD student, in a beginning of a research career, with that in mind this conference was very important to me. Lectures and poster presentation enables me to understand what are the possibilities of applying programming in research. The most interesting part of conference for me was discussion forum, it allows me to see two point of view. The presenters were very friendly, kind and they gives us lot of advice that will help me in my further career.

How has the conference inspired you in your research? (e.g. inspiration from the people, lectures, attitudes or ideas you encountered)

I’m definitely inspired in learning programming because this conference showed me abilities of applying bioinformatics in cancer research. Up to now through my studies I didn’t have opportunity to see it, now I’m absolutely inspired to make relation between wet lab and dry lab analysis. Poster presentation enables me to make connections for further collaborations, so i hope that it will help me to step into the world of cancer research and bioinformatics.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? What was it?

Heterogeneity of lectures was definitely amazing. It enables me to discuss with colleagues to develop new idea for our research. One of the most interesting and inspiring for me was lecture “Understanding Cancer Evolution with Spatial Genomics” presented by Dr. Moritz Gerstung.  It was very interesting to see how different approaches to research can improve cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Did you gain any specific knowledge that has benefited your research? Tell us about it.

Possibilities of bioinformatics in cancer research are definitely the most fascinating part of the conference for me. Knowledge about analysis of subpopulation of cancer cells would benefit my understanding of problem of my research. The field of my project is predictive biomarkers for response to neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy for patients with locally advanced rectal cancer. I hope that applying of methods presented at the conference will enable me to further develop my ideas and research, as well as to contribute to the treatment of patients with rectal cancer.

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Bioinformatics in Cancer
Job title: Postdoctoral researcher
Home institution: Izmir Biomedicine and Genome Center
Research:Our research group has focused on the signaling pathways that lead to aggressive phenotype and therapy resistance in liver cancer. Our recent studies focused on the role HGF/c-Met signaling in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and Non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) in treatment response. As a team member, I have been specifically using bioinformatics tools and designing bioinformatics algorithms to identify robust biomarkers for prediction of therapy response in HCC.As a postdoctoral researcher who is passionate about bioinformatics, I am interested in finding a biomarker (especially a fusion transcript) for HCC development and drug resistance.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

I could listen to the experts of my research field. I learned about some new technics. Especially the last discussion section (Phase separation – experience of the wet/dry interface) was very useful for me. As a bioinformatican who did my research in Turkey only, I saw that we all have same problems.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

As a former EACR participant I strongly believe that the EACR conferences give us opportunities to learn new things about cancer area and listen new and successful people in the field and discuss our work with the experts of the field in a very scientific and cozy atmosphere. They even succeeded in an online congress.

Since I am planning to continue my research carrier as a postdoc in Europe this was a great chance for me to find out potential labs for my postdoc.

How has the conference inspired you in your research? (e.g. inspiration from the people, lectures, attitudes or ideas you encountered)

Núria López-Bigas was my favorite. Her talk titled “Computational analysis of cancer genomes” inspired me a lot. As far as I see she and her group are worked very focused and their researches are very inclusive.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? What was it?

The EACR meeting bursary allowed me to spend great 2 days. I feel very lucky to join this valuable meeting. Finally, I am greatly thankful to the EACR for creating such a good opportunity for young scientists. It was an amazing experience for me. I recommend all young researchers to attend EACR congresses and evaluate the bursary opportunities.

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Imaging Cancer
Job title: Neurosurgery resident
Home institution: Tishreen University Hospital, Lattakia
Research: Solitary bone plasmacytoma is a rare tumor, representing 3% to 7% of myelomas. These lesions are typically found in the vertebral bodies of the thoracic and lumbar spine in patients with an average onset age of 50 years. We have a case of this tumor which was managed surgically with radiation.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

I’ve been fortunate to attend several conferences this year so far. However, this conference had the best program.

What I have enjoyed the most has been the opportunity that these conferences bring for us to not only spend time together but also to attend one another’s sessions. Getting to see friends and educators whom we have connected with virtually share their passion for education, helps us to better understand what they do and connect in new ways.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

The flexibility to choose topics and sessions that relate to what I want to learn right now. It means I do not have to sit through long presentations that are not relevant just because I bought an expensive conference pass. Summits are a very inexpensive way to learn from the best of the best in the industry without having to schedule a lot of time away from the office.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? 

I take this opportunity to emphasize the excellent organization of the meeting and to commend the EACR team for carrying it out with dynamism and creativity. I wish we could participate in future meetings of EACR and I invite all my colleagues to have the chance to attend these big events.

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Imaging Cancer
Job title: Medical student
Home institution: Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

This was the first cancer conference that I attend. Ever since I got into medical school, cancer research was always the topic that caught my attention as I want to specialize in oncology in the future. I am very glad that this conference in particular was my first experience in attending cancer conferences as it highlighted a lot of interesting topics in cancer that made me love cancer research even more.

Were there any social/networking highlights you want to tell us about? (e.g. you found a potential collaborator, or got to ask a question to a favourite speaker).

The thought of listening to several speakers from across the world fascinates me. I love how many people of different nationalities came together to talk about imaging in cancer in such a professional way. Not only did I enjoy walking around in Gather and asking poster presenters questions, I enjoyed asking people in Gather if they have any questions regarding my own poster.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

It was very engaging as the conference permitted questions from the chat or through the speaker. I loved how there was easy interaction.  It was very well organized and everything went smoothly on time as planned in the program.

How has the conference inspired you in your research? (e.g. inspiration from the people, lectures, attitudes or ideas you encountered)

After seeing researchers who experimented their hypothesis in real life for example on rats, I thought that someday I want to do so too. I hope one day I will have my own clinical trial.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? What was it?

I told my friends about the conference itself so that they can attend in future years.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention? Tell us about it here

I would like to thank you for granting me the Bursary as it gave me a chance to both attend and present my own poster in this elite conference. Looking forward to participating in your future conferences.

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Imaging Cancer
Job title: Master’s Student
Home institution: Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey
Research: I am currently working on sodium channels that affect cancer aggressiveness and their relationship with nerve growth factor (NGF) on cancer cell proliferation and metastasis. This relationship is not studied on breast cancer and I’m planning to make a contribution on literature for the relationship of NGF and sodium channels on breast cancer aggressiveness.

Were there any social/networking highlights you want to tell us about? (e.g. you found a potential collaborator, or got to ask a question to a favourite speaker)

Hayri Emrah Balcıoğlu is a Turkish researcher and seeing him as a speaker in a such important conference was very inspiring for me. I’m planning to get in touch with him for my PhD journey about studying abroad and also about immune contexture-based predictors in tumours.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

This was the first conference that I am attending on virtual platform and the topics were very exciting for me especially for my thesis study.

How has the conference inspired you in your research? (e.g. inspiration from the people, lectures, attitudes or ideas you encountered)

The speech of Vicky Goh about Imaging cancer heterogeneity imaging in clinical practice is quite inspirational and informative. I also impressed by her presentation style.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? What was it?

After the speech of Heinz Peter Schlemmer about whole body imaging, I’ve talked about the F-PSMA marked theragnostic agents, because we had a project idea about Gallium attached theragnostic agent for prostate cancer and we have discussed about the project details through the information that I have had from Mr. Schlemmer.

EACR conference attended with meeting bursary: Imaging Cancer
Job title: Radiologist
Country: Egypt
Research: My work as a radiologist involves dealing with multi-varieties of imaging modalities; like CT, MRI, X rays, PET/CT, etc. I use each modality to image a certain pathology or a disease in the human body. My primary area of interest within the radiology in cancer imaging. So, I deal with imaging of tumours like brain, lung, liver, etc. I also do research on cancer. My current doctoral degree research is about the relation of lung cancer metabolic activity with its type of pathology. I really enjoy working with multi-disciplinary teams and other clinicians to help the patient.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

The conference generally was full of hot topics and fruitful talks. I’m a radiologist, so imaging is my interest, but I’ve also enjoyed sessions about the novel therapeutic approaches of cancer treatment as well as talks about AI/ ML of cancer imaging.

Were there any social/networking highlights you want to tell us about? (e.g. you found a potential collaborator, or got to ask a question to a favourite speaker)

I enjoyed the interactive platform of posters. But unfortunately, I haven’t set a networking chance for scientific collaboration during the conference. I’ve always done collaborations during the on-site non virtual conference and make great relationships, etc. but the virtual thing isn’t that best for such a thing.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

I found it fun and useful at the same time. Having the posters platform made it more fun.

How has the conference inspired you in your research? (e.g. inspiration from the people, lectures, attitudes or ideas you encountered)

MRI in radiomics for rectal cancer caught my interest as I’m interested in rectal imaging.

Is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about? What was it?

Yes, the talk of professor Regina Beets-Tan of Netherlands Kancer Institute, Netherlands “Better imaging leads to better treatment and outcome”. It’s always enjoyable to listen to Dr. Beets and talk about that.

Did you gain any specific knowledge that has benefited your research? Tell us about it.

Yes, of course. The conference in general sharpened my approach and context of clinical sense and multi-disciplinary management for cancer.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention? Tell us about it here

Thanks for such an opportunity to attend that great conference.