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This conference will cover the latest advances in understanding the tumor ecosystem and the contributions of its diverse components to how cancer forms and progresses and how it can be diagnosed and treated. We will discuss the dynamic interactions of different tumor, stromal and immune cells and microorganisms in the primary and metastatic tumor microenvironment, but also the interplay of the tumor with its host macroenvironment, including the immune, circulatory and nervous systems and systemic and local metabolism. We will cover how new technologies, including complex cancer model systems, omics approaches and computational science, combined with insights from clinical research are yielding crucial information into response and resistance to therapies for the development of innovative treatment modalities for patients. We will bring together world experts to present the most exciting preclinical, translational and clinical breakthroughs across disciplines and discuss how current knowledge on the tumor ecosystem is being translated from the bench to the patient’s bedside and back to the bench for further research.


                                                                                                  

Event details

November 19 - 21, 2025
Houston, Texas, USA
In-Person Event

Speakers 

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Mikala Egeblad

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Mikala Egeblad

Co-leader of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center Program on Cellular Communication in Cancer

Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA

Mikala Egeblad, Ph.D. is a professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, co-leader of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center Program on Cellular Communication in Cancer, and chair-person of the American Association for Cancer Research Tumor Microenvironment Working Group. She obtained degrees in Medicine (B.S., 1993). Human Biology (M.Sc., 1996), and Cancer Biology (Ph.D., 2000) from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She did her dissertation research under the mentorship of Dr. Marja Jäättelä at The Danish Cancer Society. Her postdoctoral training was performed with Dr. Zena Werb at University of California, San Francisco. There, she began developing intravital spinning disk confocal microscopy to understand how the microenvironment influences tumor progression. Her research group studies how the tumor microenvironment contributes to therapy resistance and metastasis, primarily focusing on the role of neutrophils and macrophages. She has received the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program Era of Hope Scholar Award; The Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research; and the Suffrage Science Award. She is member of the Scientific Advisory Board for Vividion, Inc. and of Insmed’s Brensocatib Research Advisory Board.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Myriam Chalabi Chalabi

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Myriam Chalabi Chalabi

Medical Oncologist. Dept. Of Gastrointestinal Oncology

Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands

After graduating Medical School (2008) Myriam Chalabi did her residency in internal medicine/medical oncology. In 2016 she became staff member at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam as a Gastrointestinal Oncologist and clinician scientist. In 2022 she was named one of the 11 early career researchers to watch by Nature Medicine.

She is the lead investigator (PI) of several neoadjuvant immunotherapy trials in gastrointestinal cancers, including the globally renowned NICHE study, in which patients with colon cancers were found to have impressive responses after a short duration of neoadjuvant immunotherapy. Her research focuses on early innovative combination immunotherapy trials with a strong focus on translational research to better understand the drivers of response in these tumors and find novel immunotherapy combinations. Her main goal is to improve immunotherapy for patients with gastrointestinal cancers.

Amanda Lund

Amanda Lund

Principal Investigator and Associate Professor, Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology

NYU Langone Health, New York, USA

Marcus Goncalves

Marcus Goncalves

Director, Systemic Metabolism Research

NYU Langone Health, New York, USA

Marcus Goncalves is a physician scientist at NYU Langone Health in beautiful New York City. His lab is focused on the effects of diet and cancer on the host tissues that regulate systemic nutrient metabolism. As a practicing endocrinologist, he has helped to develop therapeutic and dietary strategies to modulate systemic glucose and insulin levels in patients with obesity, diabetes, and cancer. MG’s clinical practice focuses on the care of patients with metabolic diseases like insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, low testosterone, and complications from cancer and cancer therapy like cachexia.

Arabella Young

Arabella Young

Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology

Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah

Dr. Arabella Young, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Investigator at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah. Following graduate training in tumor immunology at the University of Queensland, she performed her postdoctoral studies at the Diabetes Center at the University of California San Francisco.

Dr. Young’s research aims to improve our understanding of the interaction between different immune-mediated diseases, which have the potential to influence treatment outcomes for patients with cancer. Her lab has established syngeneic tumor models in autoimmune-prone mice to improve mechanistic understanding of the relationship between anti-tumor immunity and immunotoxicity in response to cancer immunotherapies. Additionally, she is advancing modeling approaches that incorporate the impact of medication exposure for comorbidities alongside cancer immunotherapy efficacy, in an effort to optimize treatment outcomes for patients.

Michele de Palma

Michele de Palma

Associate professor, School of Life Sciences

EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne), Switzerland

Miki De Palma obtained his PhD in 2004 at the University of Torino Medical School (Italy), where he studied the role of the bone marrow-derived monocytes in tumor angiogenesis. He then moved to the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan to pursue novel cancer gene therapy strategies based on gene-modified monocytes, which have been clinically tested in patients with brain cancer. In 2018, he has been appointed Associate Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.  His current research focuses on engineered dendritic cells for antigen-agnostic cancer immunotherapy.
Tullia Bruno

Tullia Bruno

Assistant Professor, Department of Immunology

University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Tullia C. Bruno, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Pittsburgh and a faculty member in the Tumor Microenvironment Center and the Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy Program at the UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. She obtained her Ph.D. in Immunology from Johns Hopkins in 2010 and completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Colorado in 2015—both with a focus in tumor immunology. While Dr. Bruno’s PhD training focused on inhibitory receptors on intertumoral T cells, she became interested in the role of B cells and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS) in the tumor microenvironment (TME) during her postdoctoral fellowship and has built her independent research program around understanding intertumoral B cell and TLS function in multiple human cancers and physiologically relevant murine models. Because Dr. Bruno’s research lab has an overt focus on studying immunity within cancer patients, her research is highly translational with the potential for future clinical trials targeting B cells and TLS. Finally, given Dr. Bruno's cutting-edge work on analyzing TLS with multispectral imaging and spatial transcriptomics, she is becoming an emerging leader for spatial biology techniques. Dr. Bruno is actively involved in the UPMC Hillman community, and is an advocate for women in science, as is evidenced by her previous role as chair of the UPMC Hillman Women's Initiatives Taskforce and her contributions to the Society of Immunotherapy's Women in Immunotherapy group.

Cedric Blanpain

Cedric Blanpain

Professor of Stem Cell and Developmental Biology

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium

Cedric Blanpain graduated as a Medical Doctor (1995), received his PhD in Medical Sciences (2001) and was board certified in internal medicine (2002) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. He performed a postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Elaine Fuchs, at the Rockefeller University from 2002 to 2006. Cédric Blanpain started his laboratory in October 2006 as “chercheur qualifié” of the Belgian Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS).
Cedric Blanpain received several prestigious and highly competitive awards including EMBO Young investigator award, ERC starting, ERC consolidator and ERC advanced grants, the outstanding young investigator award of the ISSCR 2012, the Liliane Bettencourt award for life sciences 2012, the Joseph Maisin Award for basic biomedical Science 2015, the Francqui prize 2020, the European Association for Cancer Research’s Mike Price gold medal 2022, the momentum award of the ISSCR 2023 and the Fondation ARC Léopold Griffuel Award for basic research 2024 . He has been elected member of the EMBO, the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, the Academia Europaea, the French Academy of Science, and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.
Jennifer McQuade

Jennifer McQuade

Associate Professor, Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas, USA

Jennifer L. McQuade, MD, MS, MA is an Assistant Professor and Physician Scientist in Melanoma Medical Oncology. Dr. McQuade completed her medical training at Baylor College of Medicine, her residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and her fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and then spent two years in MD Anderson's prestigious Advanced Scholar program conducting research and completing a Master's in Science in Clinical and Translational Science before joining the clinical faculty in 2018. Her research focuses on how lifestyle factors influence melanoma biology and the anti-tumor immune response with the goal of developing novel strategies to improve outcomes in melanoma. In addition, Dr. McQuade holds a Master's degree in traditional Chinese medicine, spending time as a Fulbright fellow in China, and conducted studies of integrative therapies for symptom control in cancer.
David Lynden

David Lynden

Professor

Weill Cornell Medicine, School of Medical Sciences, New York, USA

Dr. David Lyden is an authority on the mechanisms by which cancer metastasizes throughout the body, particularly through the establishment of blood vessels that tumors need to grow and spread.     He is the Stavros S. Niarchos Chair and runs a laboratory studying the biology of medulloblastoma and high-grade gliomas. His lab is working to understand how cells in the environment around a tumor foster tumor growth.     In addition to research, Dr. Lyden teaches fellows, residents, medical students, graduate students, and MD/PhD students in the Tri-Institutional MD/PhD Program, which includes The Rockefeller University, and has been recognized with several awards.     His work has been published in major scientific journals such as Nature, Cell, and Science, and he is the lead editor of a major textbook called Cancer Metastasis: Biologic Basis and Therapeutics, the first textbook dedicated to research on metastasis and the treatment of metastatic disease. Dr. Lyden also serve on the board of the Tumor Microenvironment Steering Committee and the Metastasis Steering Committee of the American Association of Cancer Research.
Amy Moran

Amy Moran

Associate Professor of Cell, Developmental and Cancer Biology, School of Medicine

Oregon Health & Science University, Oregon, USA

Dr. Moran has a long-standing interest in understanding how the T cell microenvironment shapes the immunological response upon T cell activation. She has a broad background in basic immunology with specific training and expertise T cell receptor signal strength and fate decisions, tumor models, and cancer immunotherapy. Her current research seeks to understand the mechanism of action of single agent and combination therapies in models of prostate cancer. These studies parlay from work during her postdoctoral training that uncovered novel mechanisms of synergy between OX40 agonists and PD-L1 blockade in models of sarcoma and adenocarcinomas published in The Journal of Immunology and under review in Cancer Cell. Studies in her independent laboratory focus on understanding how hormone ablation therapies reverse immunesenescence in tumor bearing hosts with a particular interest in prostate cancer. These studies explore the metabolic health and plasticity of tumor-antigen specific T cells in aged hosts and the impact of sex steroid ablation and checkpoint blockade on increasing the bioenergetics potential of these cells. In addition, we explore the impact of restoring thymic function together with PD-1 inhibition in tumor-bearing hosts and the impact this has on the immune repertoire, function, and regulatory T cell differentiation.
Frank Winkler

Frank Winkler

Managing Senior Physician in the Department of Neurology

University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Professor Frank Winkler is a managing senior physician in the Department of Neurology at the University of Heidelberg and group leader at the German Cancer Research Center. He studied medicine in Hamburg, Freiburg and London, specialized in Neurology at the LMU Munich, spent a 2 year postdoc at Harvard, and was appointed to Heidelberg in 2010.

Dr Winklers’ work has been published in Nature, Cell, Nature Medicine, Cancer Cell. In 2022 he received the German Cancer Award and in 2024 the BIAL award for Biomedcine. His work focusses on the interaction of the nervous system with cancer, pioneering the field of Cancer Neuroscience, and launching investigator-initiated trial concepts.
Maria Rescigno

Maria Rescigno

Vice Rector and Delegate for Research

Humanitas University

Maria Rescigno graduated in Biology in 1990 at the University of Milan. From 1991 to 1994 she worked at the University of Cambridge, UK, in the Department of Biochemistry, as a visiting scholar. From 1995 to 1999, she worked at the National Research Council of Milan where she received her PhD in Pharmacology and toxicology in 1999. From 1999 to 2001 she worked at the University of Milano-Bicocca where she specialized in Applied Biotechnology. From 2001 to 2017 she was the director of the Dendritic cell biology and immunotherapy Unit at the Department of Experimental Oncology at the European Institute of oncology. She authored more than 130 publications. In 2008-2013 she was visiting professor at the University of Oslo. In 2016 Maria Rescigno founded Postbiotica a microbiota start-up.
Nikhil Joshi

Nikhil Joshi

Associate Professor Tenur

Yale Medical School, Connecticut, USA

The Joshi laboratory uses intricate tumor models and advanced approaches to investigate immune cell interactions with developing tumors. The goal is to determine mechanistically why these interactions do not lead to more potent anti-tumor responses and to identify entry points for modulating these interactions through genetic manipulation and therapeutic intervention. Our studies focus on using established complex mouse models to investigate how subtypes of T cells function in the tumor microenvironment and how their interactions with other immune cell types impacts tumor development. Our laboratory combines advanced genetic modeling of mice and immunologic techniques to address fundamental questions in tumor immunology.
Marcia Haigis

Marcia Haigis

Professor, Department of Cell Biology

Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, USA

Marcia C. Haigis, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, a member of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging, and the Ludwig Center at Harvard Medical School. Following graduate training in Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Biochemistry, Dr. Haigis studied mitochondrial metabolism during her postdoctoral research at MIT. She has contributed to understanding the role that mitochondrial sirtuins play in metabolism and disease. She has received a number of honors, including the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar Award, the Brookdale Foundation Leadership in Aging Award, and selection for the National Academy of Medicine's Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Program.
Drew Pardoll

Drew Pardoll

Abeloff Professor of Oncology, Medicine, Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics

Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA

Dr. Pardoll is the Abeloff Professor of Oncology, Medicine, Pathology and Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine.  He is the Director of the Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and Co-Director of the Cancer Immunology Program at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. 

Dr. Pardoll attended Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his M.D., Ph.D., in 1982 and completed his Medical Residency and Oncology Fellowship in 1985. He then worked for three years at the National Institutes of Health as a Medical Staff Fellow. Dr. Pardoll joined the departments of oncology and medicine in 1988. Dr. Pardoll has published over 300 papers as well as over 20 book chapters on the subject of T cell immunology and cancer vaccines. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and Cancer Cell, and has served as a member of scientific advisory boards for the Cancer Research Institute, the University of Pennsylvania Human Gene Therapy Gene Institute, Biologic Resources Branch of the National Cancer Institute, Harvard-Dana Farber Cancer Center, Cerus Corporation, Global Medical Products Corporation, Genencor Corporation, CellGenesys Corporation, Mojave Therapeutics, the American Association of Clinical Oncology and the American Association of Cancer Research.

Dr. Pardoll has made a number of basic advances in Cellular Immunology, including the discovery of gamma - delta T cells, NKT cells and interferon-producing killer dendritic cells.  Over the past two decades, Dr. Pardoll has studied molecular aspects of dendritic cell biology and immune regulation, particularly related to mechanisms by which cancer cells evade elimination by the immune system. He is an inventor of a number of immunotherapies, including GVAX cancer vaccines and Listeria monocytogenes based cancer vaccines. Dr. Pardoll’s basic immunology discoveries include the identification of gd-T cells, NKT cells and IKDC. He elucidated the role of Stat3 signaling in tumor immune evasion and in Th17 development, leading to the discovery that Stat3-driven Th17 responses promote carcinogenesis. Dr. Pardoll discovered one of the two ligands for the PD-1 inhibitory receptor and leads the Hopkins cancer immunology program that developed PD-1 pathway-targeted antibodies, demonstrating their clinical activity in multiple cancer types.

His more than 300 articles cover cancer vaccines, gene therapies, cancer prevention technologies, recombinant immune modulatory agents for specific pathways that regulate immunity to cancer and infectious diseases.

Katy Rezvani

Katy Rezvani

Professor of Medicine

MD Anderson, Texas, USA

Katy Rezvani, MD, PhD is a professor of medicine at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she serves as the Vice President & Head, Cell Therapy Institute for Discovery and Innovation, Sally Cooper Murray Chair in Cancer Research, and medical director of the GMP Facility. She leads a research lab with a focus on NK cell biology and developing novel NK cell engineering strategies for cancer, with the aim of translating these discoveries to the clinic. Dr. Rezvani completed her medical training at University College London, England and her PhD at Imperial College London. She completed her training in immunology and transplantation biology at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. In addition, she has co-authored over 250 peer-reviewed publications and received multiple prizes and awards, including the American Society of Hematology E. Donnall Thomas award.
Humam Kadara

Humam Kadara

Professor, Department of Translational Molecular Pathology, Division of Pathology/Lab Medicine

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas, USA

Dr. Humam Kadara is a professor in Translational Molecular Pathology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. His lab made fundamental discoveries in the cellular genesis of early lung cancer. With his group, he is keen to discover mechanisms underlying the earliest stages in cancer development and to leverage this information to identify ideal targets for cancer prevention, interception and early treatment. Outside the lab, and when he is not busy with grant/paper writing and administrative work, Dr. Kadara loves cooking with his family, reading history books, watching soccer and playing with his young kids.
Li Ding

Li Ding

Director of Computational Biology, Oncology Assistant Director at McDonnell Genome Institute

Washington University, Missouri, USA

Li Ding, PhD, is the David English Smith Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Washington University. Dr. Ding's research focuses on integrating cancer proteogenomics (including single cell and spatial omics), patient-derived cancer models, functional genomics, and drug  development to advance cancer biology and precision medicine. This work spans many cancer types, including acute myeloid leukemia, breast cancer, kidney cancer, pancreatic cancer, prostate cancer, glioblastoma, and multiple myeloma, with key findings including the identification and characterization of pathogenic germline variants and somatic cancer drivers, and discovery of age-related clonal hematopoiesis. Her research team has also developed widely-used computational tools, including VarScan, SciClone, BreakDancer, MSIsensor, Pindel-C, HotSpot3D, and MuSiC and she plays significant roles and co-chairs various groups within The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC), the Patient-Derived Xenografts Development and Trial Centers Research Network (PDXNet), Patient Engagement and Cancer Genome Sequencing (PE-CGS), Cellular Senescence Network (SenNet), and Human Tumor Atlas Network (HTAN). She also serves on the Steering Committees of CPTAC, TCGA, PDXnet, PE-CGS, SenNet, and co-chairs the HTAN Steering Committee. Dr. Ding has been recognized several times among Thomson-Reuters’ surveys of influential researchers, including listing among “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds”, and was a member of a group honored with the American Association of Cancer Research Team Science Award for contributions to TCGA. Her work continues to be inspired by the ultimate goal of making personalized medicine a reality for cancer patients.
Matt Vander Heiden

Matt Vander Heiden

Director, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research

MIT, Massachusetts, United States

Matthew Vander Heiden is the director of the Koch Institute at MIT, the Lester Wolfe (1919) Professor of Molecular Biology, and a member of the Broad Institute. He is a practicing oncologist and instructor in medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School. He earned his doctoral and medical degrees from the University of Chicago, where he worked in the laboratory of Craig Thompson. Vander Heiden then completed a residency in internal medicine at Boston's Brigham & Women's Hospital and a hematology-oncology fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Massachusetts General Hospital. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Lewis Cantley at Harvard Medical School prior to joining the MIT faculty in 2010. Vander Heiden serves on the scientific advisory board of Yale Cancer Center, Salk Cancer Center, Wistar Cancer Center, Jackson Labs, MGH, CSI-Singapore, IFOM Milan, Agios Pharmaceuticals, iTeos Therapeutics, Pretzel Therapeutics, Lime Therapeutics, Sage Therapeutics, and Auron Therapeutics, of which he is also an academic founder. He is part of the investment advisory board for DROIA Venture Fund and MPM Capital.
Michael Angelo

Michael Angelo

Associate Professor of Pathology

Stanford University School of Medicine, California, USA

Michael Angelo, MD PhD is a board-certified pathologist and assistant professor in the department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Angelo is a leader in high dimensional imaging with expertise in tissue homeostasis, tumor immunology, and infectious disease. His lab has pioneered the construction and development of Multiplexed Ion Beam Imaging by time of flight (MIBI-TOF). MIBI-TOF uses secondary ion mass spectrometry and metal-tagged antibodies to achieve rapid, simultaneous imaging of dozens of proteins at subcellular resolution. In recognition of this achievement, Dr. Angelo received the NIH Director’s Early Independence award in 2014. His lab has since used this novel technology to discover previously unknown rule sets governing the spatial organization and cellular composition of immune, stromal, and tumor cells within the tumor microenvironment in triple negative breast cancer. These findings were found to be predictive of single cell expression of several immunotherapy drug targets and of 10-year overall survival. This effort has led to ongoing work aimed at elucidating structural mechanisms in the TME that promote recruitment of cancer associated fibroblasts, tumor associated macrophages, and extracellular matrix remodeling. Dr. Angelo is the recipient of the 2020 DOD Era of Hope Award and a principal investigator on multiple extramural awards from the National Cancer Institute, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Human Biomolecular Atlas (HuBMAP) initiative.

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Top headline image: Lara Crow