We met in Bergamo, Italy for our conference Cancer Genomics, Multiomics and Computational Biology between 30 April and 02 May 2024. The event was praised for its cutting-edge topics and intimate setting.

Supported by Worldwide Cancer Research, we were delighted to award several Travel Grants to help cancer researchers in need of financial assistance to attend the event.

Read on to learn about their experience of the conference.


1Bertha Guadalupe Rueda Zarazúa

PhD student, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Research: We are trying to understand in deep the genomic landscape of the lung cancer in Mexican patients. We’re focusing on the particularities of our population and the relation with our ancestry because ours is one of the populations underrepresented in bigger studies.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

This meeting was notable for its intimate scale, affording attendees the opportunity to engage with one another on a more personal level. The smaller size of the gathering allowed for repeated interactions, fostering a sense of closeness and familiarity. I have never attended a conference that was specifically tailored to my field of interest. I can attest that each talk and poster was of the highest caliber, and I would have liked to have spent more time dedicated to each one.

How has the conference inspired you in your research?

The topics on the agenda at this conference not only fit in with my current project, but also
align with my personal scientific interests. As a bioinformatician in training, I’m really interested in different analytical approaches that can be used to answer biological questions. The field is changing really fast, so I think the best way to get the most out of this work and the next steps is to talk to people from different teams and countries.

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

I was really excited to meet Nuria and Francisco, whose work I’ve been following for years. I also got some great feedback and validation of the methods we’re proposing for evaluating our data. I felt like I was part of a group of people who share my motivation and have faced similar challenges. For years, I felt like I was the only one in my lab doing and learning bioinformatics, and interested in expanding this kind of approach within our projects. And now, thanks to these events, I feel more and more like I’m part of a community.

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

When I got back, I just wanted to share what I’d seen and some ideas for future research
projects. I even talked about Eytan Ruppin’s work on our science podcast because I found his talk really amusing. I think I’ll start looking into machine learning for our new project.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

I had a great time at the conference and it was really worthwhile. I tried to chat with as many people as I could at different points during the conference. I was lucky enough to meet two other Mexican nationals who were living in other countries. It was also great to hear about their personal experiences of working together with other countries. This was really helpful, as I was in the middle of my PhD at the time.

I think this was a full-experience for any young scientist. By the end, you’ll have new
perspectives, useful feedback, a feel for the local community and an invaluable experience of being in another country with a very diverse population who share your motivation. It’s a really refreshing experience.

Swipe left or click ‘Next’ at the top to see the next report

2Juan Luis Onieva Zafra

PhD student, Medical Oncology Service (Group of Translational Research in Cancer Immunotherapy), Regional and Virgen de la Victoria University Hospitals, IBIMA BIONAND Platform, Spain

Research: I’m Juanlu, a bioinformatics Ph.D. student on a mission to checkmate cancer. Imagine our immune system as players in a high-stakes chess game against tumours. Just like in chess, understanding the moves and strategies is crucial. That’s where I come in. Using a holistic approach, I dive into the molecular intricacies of the immune-tumour interaction, analysing data at transcriptomic, genomic, and epigenomic levels. But I don’t stop there. With the help of artificial intelligence, I uncover vulnerabilities and devise precise strategies, akin to promoting a pawn to a queen in chess.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

Having the feeling that I am part of a whole. Seeing that the scientists I admire are real people and are approachable. Sometimes, we tend to think that science stays confined to PubMed and the lab building. However, attending events like this helps open your eyes.

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

Firstly, it’s been a true honor to meet Nuria López-Bigas. I’ve admired her as a scientist for several years, and being able to meet her in person, listen to her advice, and show my work to her felt like meeting Rihanna or Cristiano Ronaldo. When I saw her at the conference, I had those nervous feelings of being in front of someone famous. And despite my shyness, I decided to approach her and talk to her.

And also, I would like to highlight another attendee, Olivia. I was travelling alone on this trip, and I was afraid I wouldn’t find anyone to interact with both inside and outside the conference. However, by chance I struck up a good relationship from the first coffee and we have attended the talks together and had aperitifs after the conference every day.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

Mainly, the feeling of closeness I’ve experienced throughout the entire conference. In previous events like AACR or ISMB, they were very crowded, and I couldn’t feel like a part of the event. I was just one spectator. Here, I’ve felt like a part of the event.

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

My favourite cultural activity those days can be summed up as: aperitif, pizza, and ice cream; in that order. Bergamo is such a beautiful city, and just sitting peacefully enjoying an Aperol Spritz in the square with people from all over the world sharing experiences is the best cultural activity I’ve ever had.

How has the conference inspired you in your research?

At an inspirational level, each talk has been of extreme quality and has served me to have role models in my future professional career. In particular, I would like to highlight two: Ido Amit and Bernd Bodenmiller.

Ido Amit has been a personal discovery for me. I already knew part of his professional career. However, seeing him present his work live has impressed me. Seeing how he presented his work so clearly, and not only in terms of information quality, but also transmitted love for what he does. For me, “The power of ONE” has been one of the talks that has transmitted the most inspiration to me.

And on the other hand, what I consider a success story and what I aspire to in my work: TU-PRO.ch. For me, it is a clear definition of precision oncology, with an extreme synergy between different disciplines to determine the best treatment for each patient.

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

The first thing was that we have to participate more in the events organised by the EACR. The scientific and organisational quality is extraordinary.

The next thing was to congratulate the people working in the lab, because our work had very positive feedback, especially the methylation part. So, I wanted to share with them how well received those results were.

Lastly, my third point was about how we could implement some of what I’ve learned during these days into our research.

Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Finally, I want to take this opportunity to thank both EACR and Worldwide Cancer Research for the chance they’ve given me to attend this event. During this period, I’ve felt both professional and personal growth. At this stage, nearing the end of my PhD thesis, experiences like this are necessary to recharge and provide a dose of motivation, reminding me of the value research holds in this field.

Swipe left or click ‘Next’ at the top to see the next report

3Kevin Tu

MPhil student, University of Cambridge, UK

Research: Breast cancers are made up of both cancerous and non-cancerous cells, such as immune cells, blood vessels, normal tissue. I study the interaction between these two populations, which can get complicated as there are dozens of different cells to consider, and each cell can have a different function depending on the context. My research tries to detangle these interactions and relate them to patient outcomes. Currently, I am applying this to a large cohort of 16,000 breast cancer patients, the largest study of its kind yet, to identify patterns in tumour makeup which can be targeted for therapy development.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

The personal highlight of the conference was eating dinner with my lab. My lab recently disbanded due to departmental politics. As a result, the lab was fractured in half, with each half seeking asylum in different labs. So currently, I don’t work with one half of the lab that often. Being reunited as a whole lab again over dinner was a delight.

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

Before my talk, Prof. Bernd Bodenmiller, the inventor of image mass cytometry (IMC), gave a talk on how they were now translating IMC to the clinic. For the last decade, IMC has been limited to the research lab, so it was simply amazing to see it being used in a clinical trial.

Twenty minutes later during my talk, I presented IMC data of my own. However, at the end, I also highlighted its limitations. My labmates later said I had “ripped into IMC”. So, imagine my surprise when Bodenmiller came up to me afterwards and offered me a PhD position! By far, this was the most (pleasantly) surprising interaction I had at the conference.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

I typically have attended large conferences in the past (1000+ people) such as AACR, ESHG, ATS. This conference was unique in that it was smaller and more intimate. I personally found this a lot more enjoyable, as, perhaps ironically, I could meet and connect with more people. The bigger conferences are mor overwhelming with the sheer number of people and sessions, while this conference was a lot more focused. I think I took away more from this conference, both in terms of the people I met and the sessions I learned from.

How has this conference inspired you in your research?

I got inspiration from Eytan Ruppin, chief of the NCI Cancer Data Science Laboratory. He presented work that showed treatment response could be predicted from just images of tissue sections. The work was interesting in that he could obtain the same robustness in prediction with a microscope slide as our lab could with a multi-omics approach. I really appreciated this approach, as it would be lower-cost and more accessible to implement in the clinic. He was also a lesson on how to deliver an engaging, funny scientific talk. He got a laugh every minute during his 20 minute talk, yet this did not subtract from the quality or impact of the work he was doing nor his delivery.

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

At the end of the conference, I was enthusiastic about the quality and organisation of the conference, but also for the interesting talks that completely caught my attention. Furthermore, I was happy to have spent three days fully immersed in a stimulating environment, full of scientists proud of their job and happy to be involved in the oncological research.

Swipe left or click ‘Next’ at the top to see the next report

4Marcellus George Augustine

MBPhD student, UCL and The Francis Crick Institute, UK

Research: My current research focuses on using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify new ways of activating the body’s immune system to fight and kill cancer cells. This involves combining information about tumours from patients with different cancer types with the roles different genes play in our bodies.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

Whilst I enjoyed the entire conference, a personal highlight was the opportunity to present my work to expert researchers. The quality of feedback I received was excellent and our discussions have led to ideas on how I can further refine my work. It was particularly exciting to connect with scientists at different stages of their careers. Advice from those who were further along their career was both relevant and helpful to progressing my own.

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

There were plenty of networking and social opportunities at this conference, both during the poster and coffee breaks, as well as the great conference dinner. I was able to connect with colleagues working in a range of fields from basic science to clinical studies.

Furthermore, through discussions with poster presenters and speakers, I learned about new approaches and techniques relevant to spatial data, machine learning, and single cell biology.

Finally, I met many interesting scientists during the conference dinner. There were several conversations with experts in different areas, leading to unique insights.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

A unique quality of this conference was the high computational expertise of those in attendance. I engaged in discussions with technical experts on multiple aspects of my project which helped me develop clear ideas on areas of possible refinements as well as new ways to benchmark my approaches.

Moreover, presenters and speakers delved deeper into the computational techniques they applied, which meant it was easier to assess how similar techniques might benefit one’s own work.

On a more light-hearted note, the quality of food and coffee served during the breaks was exceptional!

How has the conference inspired you in your research?

Though attending this conference, I have developed new ways of extending and enhancing my own research. I learned about new datasets that can be incorporated into my pipeline to provide a richer representation of tumour-immune dynamics for my model frameworks to learn from. Additionally, I now have a new way of querying what aspects of tumour biology my AI models have grasped, which was motivated by efforts described in some of the talks. Implementing this in my own work will help increase confidence in the predictions made by my AI systems.

Presenting my work also enabled me to enhance my scientific communication skills. This will serve me well in future presentations and discussions throughout my career.

Swipe left or click ‘Next’ at the top to see the next report

5Marco Fantuz

Postdoc, Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine, Italy

Research: My host laboratory focuses on the causal relationship between environmental factors and tumour predisposition in pancreatic cancer, a disease with abysmal survival rates and an ever-growing public health concern. One of the reasons of its astonishing mortality rate is constituted by a typically late diagnosis. Therefore, a better understanding of the mechanisms that facilitate tumor initiation is critical to curtail disease incidence and death burden.

My research stems from epidemiological evidence showing that even a single event of acute pancreatitis, a relatively minor and short-lived inflammatory event, is able to increase the risk of developing pancreatic cancer even decades after its resolution, albeit the apparent appears macroscopical and histological normality of the post-inflammation pancreatic parenchyma.

The dissection of the complex and multilayered interplay between molecular and cellular memory phenotypes requires the use of leading-edge bioinformatic and experimental approaches, coupling the analysis of single-cell level data with appropriately devised in vivo animal models.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

Being a completely self-taught bioinformatician, participating in the EACR conference on Cancer Genomics, Multiomics and Computational Biology has given me the possibility to directly meet many colleagues that develop and use many of the in silico approaches which I employ daily in my research.

Moreover, I got the chance to get in touch with state-of-the-art research, which displayed incredible innovations in the field of data integration and spatial single-cell omics, such as the amazing work of Tancredi Massimo Pentimalli, which showed a 3D single-cell resolved reconstruction of a sample derived from a lung tumor, again highlighting the tremendous potential of these omic approaches.

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

I was lucky enough to be able to engage with Tancredi Massimo Pentimalli and other colleagues after congress hours over dinner in Bergamo, and this has been made possible by the informal and collaborative atmosphere that the organisers and the scientific committee have posed in place during the entire meeting. Indeed, being able to freely discuss with colleagues during breaks and social events has represented for me a big opportunity to compare my work with top-notch scientists in the field and to initiate fruitful discussions and collaboration opportunities.

Swipe left or click ‘Next’ at the top to see the next report

6Shira Sagie

Postdoctoral Fellow, Samuels Lab, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel

Research: Immunotherapy is a revolutionary cancer treatment, yet advanced solid tumours often resist it. Our research targets the KRAS G12V mutation in cancer cells, identifying a unique marker that makes them detectable by the immune system. We aim to harness the body’s defense mechanisms by finding immune cells that can recognise and destroy these marked cancer cells. By exploring innovative treatment combinations, we seek to empower immune cells to eliminate tumours. This research not only aims to treat cancers with the KRAS G12V mutation but also paves the way for future therapies targeting other mutations, offering hope to more patients.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

I was particularly excited about Professor Rupin’s talk. He discussed his previous research and the journey that led him to identify an affordable and accessible solution for cancer type diagnosis. This innovation promises faster and cheaper results, especially beneficial for third-world countries.

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

The conference dinner. I sat next to two speakers and had a very fruitful conversation with one of them regarding possible future collaboration. With the second speaker, I discussed my future career goals and options, and set up to continue this talk in the future.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

It was very intimate and well-planned for social interactions. I felt comfortable giving my first international oral presentation, despite the presence of many distinguished guests.

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

I took advantage of arriving to Italy and stayed for the weekend and travelled in the beautiful lake region- Lago Como and Lago Majora.

How has the conference inspired you in your research?

I received excellent feedback on my talk and work, which significantly boosted my motivation and self-esteem. This encouragement is invaluable, especially given the challenges that often arise in scientific research.

Swipe left or click ‘Next’ at the top to see the next report

7Yingcheng Wu

Fu Ching Yen Scholar MD, PhD Candidate, Zhongshan Hospital Fudan University, China

Research: My research explores how cellular metabolism influences the immune system within the tumor microenvironment. Cancer cells often have altered metabolic processes, which can affect nearby immune cells and their ability to fight the tumour. By understanding these complex interactions between metabolism and immunity, we aim to identify new targets for cancer therapies that can enhance the body’s natural defenses against the disease. Our goal is to develop more effective treatments that harness the power of the immune system to combat cancer, ultimately improving patient outcomes and quality of life.

What was a personal highlight of the conference for you?

One of the personal highlights of the conference for me was the atmosphere of open discussion. I had the opportunity to directly engage with professors and early-career researchers, which allowed for stimulating conversations and the exchange of ideas. These interactions provided valuable insights into current research trends and potential collaborations. The conference fostered an environment that encouraged networking and learning from experts in cancer genomics, which was both inspiring and informative for my own research.

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

The conference dinner. I sat next to two speakers and had a very fruitful conversation with one of them regarding possible future collaboration. With the second speaker, I discussed my future career goals and options, and set up to continue this talk in the future.

How was this conference different from others you have attended?

This conference stood out from others I have attended due to its small-scale and boutique nature. The intimate setting facilitated in-depth discussions focused on the core principles and latest advancements in the field, which I would describe as “true science.” Unlike larger conferences where the emphasis may be on broader topics or networking, this event provided a platform for attendees to delve into the intricacies of cutting-edge research and engage in meaningful, scientific discourse. The smaller group size allowed for more personalised interactions with experts and fostered an environment conducive to exchanging ideas and exploring new perspectives on genomics. This unique format made the conference a valuable and enriching experience for me as a researcher.

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

I had a blast exploring the downtown area of Bergamo and soaking in the natural beauty of northern Italy during my free time outside the conference. Bergamo is such a charming city with its old-world architecture, winding streets, and stunning views from the upper town. It was the perfect place to wander and discover hidden gems.

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

One of the most valuable takeaways from the conference was the inspiration I gained regarding new metabolic screening methods. This knowledge has been incredibly beneficial for my research in immune metabolism. During the conference, I had the opportunity to learn about cutting-edge techniques and approaches being employed by other researchers in the field. These innovative methods offer new ways to investigate and understand the complex interplay between cellular metabolism and immune function within the tumour microenvironment.


Interested in EACR Conferences and further Travel Grants?

We organise a variety of excellent cancer research conferences, both in person and virtual, where the latest research topics and interaction for participants are the very highest priorities.

To assist researchers who need financial assistance to attend our in-person conferences, we offer EACR-Worldwide Cancer Research Travel Grants. Recipients also get the opportunity to present their work as an oral or poster presentation. Each Travel Grant includes a free registration and funds to support travel and accommodation costs.

Make sure you add the dates of upcoming EACR Conferences to your diary now. Don’t forget we offer EACR member discounts on all of our registration fees!