October 2018 saw the EACR host a EACR Conferences meeting in the beautiful Spanish city of Bilbao for the very first time. The Euskalduna Conference Centre and the scientific programme committee, chaired by Arkaitz Carracedo (CIC bioGUNE, Spain), welcomed 226 participants from 34 countries for Mechanisms to Therapies: Innovations in Cancer Metabolism.
The three day programme boasted an exciting line-up of speakers and included keynote lectures from William Kaelin (Dana Farber Cancer Institute, USA), and recent EACR Mike Price Award recipient Karen Vousden (The Francis Crick Institute, UK). Topics covered included: the impact of oncogenic signaling on metabolism, metabolic wiring, metabolic control of the epigenome, targeting stroma metabolism and targeting metabolic liabilities.
Great group of scientists from around the world. The quality of the talks and the posters was excellent
A Meet the Expert Lunch on the opening day gave participants the opportunity to interact with speakers and ask questions in an relaxed lunchtime setting. The conference dinner at Kafe Antzokia’s Restaurant on the final evening also provided excellent neworking opportunities in a informal environment and participants enjoyed music and dancing into the evening with a live DJ.
Feedback
Thank you to all of the participants who completed the post-conference evaluation survey. We are delighted that from the survey, 100% of participants would recommend this conference to others and 100% were satisfied with the scientific quality of the programme. 99% of participants were also satisfied with the opportunities provided for networking, interaction and discussion.
Great speakers, well organised and good food! I also really enjoyed the intimate feel of the conference, making it easier and much more enjoyable to talk to all the different people, both early career and the big names in metabolic research
A lot of unpublished data was presented with an open and friendly dialogue from a broad range of interests
For me the meeting was perfectly organized. Good speakers with state of the art talks. I really enjoy the opportunity to meet not only researchers, but also people working in other fields (industry and editors)
Poster Prizes
During two lively poster sessions, authors presented their work to other participants and the poster judges. From the 117 accepted abstracts, 11 Poster Prizes were awarded thanks to additional sponsorship. You can still find all of the abstracts in the online programme book. Congratulations to all of the winners:
Poster prizes sponsored by the EACR of €100 each
- Michael Aregger (University of Toronto, Canada) “Global mapping of metabolic genetic interaction networks using CRISPR-Cas screens to reveal novel cancer vulnerabilities and biomarkers”
- Eva Crosas-Molist (King’s College London, UK) “Mitochondrial dynamics linked to cell adhesion tune force generation during tumour dissemination”
Poster prizes sponsored by Cancer at Nature Research of €100 each
- Andrés Cano (Luxembourg Institute of Health, Luxembourg) “Metabolic differences related to oxidative stress defense in glioma”
- Victoire Gouirand (U1068-CRCM, France) “Role of leucine and leucine-derived products in pancreatic cancer progression and metastasis formation”
- Ana Ortega (CNIO, Spain) “Nutrient-dependent activation of mTORC1 by RRAGC mutations enhances germinal center activation and drives follicular lymphoma”
- Lucille Stuani (CRCT, France) “Catabolic flexibility enhances oxidative phosphorylation and drug resistance but induces higher mitochondrial dependency and vulnerability in IDH1 mutant leukemia”
Poster prizes offering a journal subscription
- Nature Cell Biology: Ivana Hermanova (CIC bioGUNE, Spain) “Loss of LKB1 drives lethal metastatic prostate cancer”
- Nature: Jan Pencik (Medical University of Vienna, Austria) “STAT3 and LKB1 cooperate to suppress mTORC1-dependent cancer metabolic reprogramming”
- Nature: Laetitia Linares (IRCM U1194, France) “MDM2 and Metabolism: new target for cancer therapy”
- Nature Medicine: Juan Manuel Schvartzman (MSKCC, USA) “2-hydroxyglutarate inhibits transcription factor mediated differentiation by preventing H3K9 demethylation”
- Nature Reviews Cancer: Judith Goncalves (INSERM U970, France) “Comparison of Sdhb and Sdhd knockouts in chromaffin cells to explain SDHBrelated malignancy in paraganglioma”
Meeting Bursary Awards
We were also delighted to offer 6 EACR-Worldwide Cancer Research meeting bursaries to help early-career members to attend. Each recipient received a free registration and funds of up to €500 to support their travel and accommodation costs. Our congratulations go to:
Arthur Dyer – UK- Mattia Falcone – Germany
- Victoire Gouirand – France
- Andreia Henriques – Portugal
- Lorea Valcarcel Jimenez – Spain
- Tin Lok Wong – Hong Kong
Want to find out more about our bursary winners’ experiences at the conference? You can read their conference reports here – A Participant’s View: Mechanisms to Therapies 2018
Photo Gallery
A photo gallery from this conference is available on the EACR Facebook Page.
