A Participant’s View: Making it Personal 2018

Home institution and country: University of Minnesota, USA

My research is on developing a method that will allow for efficient and non-invasive imaging of aggressive prostate cancer. The method involved injecting DNA which will allow for an imaging protein to be expressed in the prostate cancer only and then be detected by clinically used technologies such as positron emission tomography. The specificity of this method for prostate cancer comes from using a DNA element called a promoter that is overactive in the prostate cancer and results in overexpression of a gene called PEG10. I have used this PEG10 promoter in my DNA construct to detect prostate cancer tumors in mice by injecting the DNA intravenously and then imaging the mice.

The conferences really do inspire creative thinking

Did you take part in any interesting local/cultural activities in your free time outside of the conference?

Before the conference I visited Rome! Traveling from the US to Italy is a big ordeal so I wanted to take advantage of being in Italy. The weekend before the conference, I went to Rome and explored all the ancient ruins. My favorite part was the Colosseum. The US does not have structures that are thousands years old so it was a unique experience to look at architecture that is not centuries, but thousands of years old. I also indulged in amazing Italian cuisine. It is hard to name a favorite meal because everything I tried was delicious.

How has the conference inspired you in your research?

Many speakers at this conference presented on bioinformatics data. My laboratory is a wetlab with all of results coming from cells or animals and no big data analysis occurs. Attending this conference made me realize how important big data analysis is and how much different information can be obtain from just one cohort. Since my lab studies proteins involved in prostate cancer, I think performing big data analysis could strengthen our research findings by showing the relevance in patients on a large scale.

When you got home, is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about?

The first thing I wanted to inform my fellow younger colleagues about is that they should start attending these smaller EACR conferences earlier in their PhD careers. I waited until my last year to attend conferences because I was waiting to have interesting data to present. In the US, PhDs are on average five years, so being in my last year of studies I had a lot of data to share at the conference. However, knowing my end date for the projects I am working on can put a stopper on how much I can incorporate from what I learned into my current projects. The conferences really do inspire creative thinking and it would help to get those inspirations earlier in the project so that there is time left for exploration.

Have you brought back any specific knowledge that has benefited your research?

I brought back some ideas for future experiments! We have previously incorporated some RNA-seq data in our studies but I always thought that the wetlab experiments were more valuable. The experiments I have in mind focus on incorporating the wetlab experiments that I would typically do, performing RNA-seq on those samples, and not just pulling from data sets already publicly available. This conference conveyed to me the power of RNA-seq and how it can be incorporated in my experiments to validate my conclusions as well as provide insights that a colorimetric assay for example, would not be able to.

Home institution and country:
Institute of Cancer Research, UK

I work in colorectal cancer (CRC), one of the most common cancers and one in which patients whose disease has spread around their body have an average survival of only 2 years. CRC tumours vary greatly from person to person, which makes it difficult to say whether a particular treatment will work for a particular patient or not. My project tries to improve our understanding of this variability in CRC so that patients are matched to treatments that have the highest probability of succeeding, given their particular type of tumour.

Instead of wading through stacks of presentations to find those relevant to my interests, I was able to find points applicable to my research in all of the talks

Were there any social/networking highlights you want to tell us about?

Some attendees approached me during my poster presentation to discuss the possibility of future collaborations, and integrating my work into their projects. It was exciting to hear ideas about my work from new perspectives, and consider how it could be complementary to other interesting projects being undertaken in the community.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

The size of this conference was perfect for a researcher at my career stage. Instead of wading through stacks of presentations to find those relevant to my interests, I was able to find points applicable to my research in all of the talks – however, it wasn’t so small so as to feel esoteric in any way.

Did you take part in any interesting local/cultural activities in your free time outside of the conference?

Alongside the fantastic walking tour of the beautiful city of Bergamo that was the conference social activity, I also had time to visit Milan to see the Duomo, Porta Sempione and Castello Sforzesco (which houses one of Michelangelo’s final sculptures), as well as sample some delicious gelato and Lombardy cuisine.

How has the conference inspired you in your research?

The conference has encouraged me that my research is valued by the community – as a PhD student, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the high quality of research you see around you and occasionally experience “imposter syndrome”, however the discussions I had with other researchers and their enthusiasm for my work has increased my confidence in its contribution to the communal effort.

Home institution and country: University of Minho, Portugal

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common type of cancer among the urological system. Until recently, treatment was limited since this type of cancer is resistant to chemo- and radiotherapy. Therefore, due to low response rates and identification of new targets linked to RCC initiation and progression, other routes were investigated leading to targeted therapies as the current most hope to treat RCC. Despite the improvement of survival rates, activation of other vias and additional modifications may cause cancer cell resistance to targeted therapies. Thus, improving therapeutic selectivity and efficacy and overcoming drug resistance are the major goals of my current work.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

Personally, I really learned a lot from the panel discussion session with the invited speakers. I think it gave us a more precise view of what is currently being pursued in the fight against cancer (early stage detection and the drug discovery). I consider that Dr David Solit highly contributed with his personal and comprehensive opinion on what should be done to improve treatment and survival rates.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

All the conferences I have been before were mainly focused on cell and tumour biology. In this case, Making it Personal: Cancer Precision Medicine gave me a different overview about cancer research in a translational manner. Drug resistance was broadly discussed and, consequently, how can it be overcome with new drug development and discovery of new targets. At this moment, this is the main goal of my work making this conference an extra-value to continue my current research.

Did you take part in any interesting local/cultural activities in your free time outside of the conference?

I had the opportunity to do the walking tour through the Città Alta which I really appreciated. Bergamo was a really well-chosen small city but with so much historical power. In addition, I was also able to attend the conference dinner that offered me the chance to get to know some researchers better and discuss possible collaborations.

When you got home, is there anything from the conference that you immediately wanted to tell your colleagues about?

Indeed, I started telling my colleagues how much I enjoyed the meeting. I was impressed by the fact that there were so many researchers focusing on the discovery of new drugs and new targets to treat cancer. Compared to other bio-conferences I went to, I think it was an excellent and positive point that I would like to recognize.

Home institution and country: Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands

The aim of my research project is to better understand the ability of certain breast cancer cells to remain hidden in the patient body in a “dormant” state until they re-activate years or even decades later leading to metastasis formation and patient relapse. This process is highly dynamic as cells can enter dormancy or reactivate at any time, therefore I am using several microscopy techniques that allow visualization of living dormant cells over several days. The ultimate goal being to understand how we can therapeutically target this process and kill the dormant cells.

I got very valuable feedback that will probably improve my research project

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

Most of the speakers agreed to share unpublished data and according to me this is quite amazing!

Were there any social/networking highlights you want to tell us about?

I had the opportunity to speak with an expert in my field of research. I got very valuable feedback from him that will probably improve my research project. I fell really grateful for that.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

First the format: around 100 people, 4 sessions spread on 2.5 days with 2 posters sessions. The variety of talks: scientific talk, panel discussion, meet the expert, Industry symposium. It was light but very complete at the same time. I really like it!

Did you take part in any interesting local/cultural activities in your free time outside of the conference?

The tour of Bergamo was amazing although it was at night. The speaker was so enthusiastic about the history of the city that she convinced me to come back later on during the week. I also met great fellows during the meeting and was able to share a very traditional Italian dinner with them. Lot of fun!

Home institution and country: German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Germany

Family history is the strongest risk factor for prostate cancer. However, current prostate cancer screening guidelines lack personalized evidenced-based guidance regarding the best age of screening for men with different types of family history of prostate cancer. Our study for the first time provides evidence-based risk-adapted guidance for the optimal starting age of screening for family members of prostate cancer patients. In our research, we resort to the nationwide Swedish Family-Cancer Database, which is the largest of its kind. In this database more than 16 million individuals with about two million cancer patients were included.

I was inspired by this conference in many ways

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

This meeting was of medium size but very concise, which allowed the participants to have more opportunity to interact with the international speakers and other researchers from similar scientific fields and discuss interested topics in depth in various sessions (‘meet the expert’, poster viewing and discussion, panel discussion).

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

This conference schedule was tight but well-organized with high quality talks. The research fields for all the speakers are diversified but highly correlated with each other.

Did you take part in any interesting local/cultural activities in your free time outside of the conference?

Yes. Thanks to the organizing committee, I had the chance to take part in the walking tour in the old town of Bergamo with other researchers attending this meeting. It was a really nice opportunity for us to talk to and network with each other in a very relaxing atmosphere.

How has the conference inspired you in your research?

I was inspired by this conference in many ways. As an epidemiologist, this conference offered me a great opportunity to meet experts from many different research fields and to get to know on-going researches which are also about precision medicine but in a different direction from my project.