Cancer genomics

Registration Fees (include access to all of the talks, digital poster sessions and online group discussions, and help us cover our costs to run the event. For further information please refer to the FAQ page):

Accredited journalists may be eligible to register for a complimentary registration. Registrants may be required to provide accreditation or equivalent proof of press membership after registration. Please contact Maryann Heck for more information.

Confirmation and Payment

Registration will be on a first-come first-served basis. Your place can only be confirmed after payment of the registration fee.
Types of payments accepted are international bank transfers and credit card payments.

Abstract submission

Only registered participants are eligible to submit an abstract. We only accept online abstract submissions.

After you have logged in and successfully registered, you will receive an email asking you to submit your abstract.  Click on the link provided and enter your abstract in the text box provided. Alternatively you can submit your abstract by clicking on the link on the confirmation page directly after registering.

When submitting your abstract you can also apply for an oral or poster presentation. A selection process will take place with the results announced 2-3 weeks after the abstract submission deadline.

Financial Assistance

Registration Fee Waivers

All academic and student registrants are invited to apply for a registration fee waiver, provided by the EMBL Advanced Training Centre Corporate Partnership Programme. The registration fee waiver covers the registration sum that you have paid to attend the meeting. Conference participants are not required to pre-pay the registration fee to be selected for a fee waiver for a virtual meeting. If you have already paid the registration fee and are awarded a fee waiver, it will be reimbursed after the meeting. Course participants are required to pay the course fee in advance, which will then be reimbursed after the recipient has attended the course.

Childcare Grants

For participants and speakers with childcare responsibilities there is the possibility to apply for a grant, provided by the EMBL Advanced Training Centre Corporate Partnership Programme, to offset childcare costs incurred when participating at a virtual event. Eligible costs include fees for a babysitter or childcare facility or travel costs for a care giver. Please note that priority will be given to early stage researchers. Costs will be reimbursed after the meeting only once a reimbursement form and original receipts have been received. Attendance at the event is required in order to be eligible to receive the reimbursement. In order to apply for this grant, you must be registered by the abstract submission deadline.

Application

Applications for financial assistance can be submitted via the submission portal* (for the submission of abstracts for conferences or the submission of motivation letters for courses) by completing the Financial Assistance Application Section (underneath the section for entering abstract/motivation letter information). The link to the portal can be found in the registration confirmation email that you will receive after registering for the conference or course.

For conferences, if you are not submitting an abstract, you can still apply for financial assistance in the submission portal. Take a look at the instructions for applying for financial assistance.

Note that priority will be given to those submitting an abstract to present at the conference. In your application you will be asked to answer questions regarding your motivation for applying, and, for registration fee waivers, the reasons why your lab cannot fund your attendance and how your attendance will make a difference to your career. Application for financial support will not affect the outcome of your registration application.

*For some events, applications for Childcare Grants will still be done by email. Information about the grant will be sent out shortly after the abstract/motivation letter deadline. Please contact the event Conference Officer if you have any questions.

Selection

The scientific organisers will select the recipients of registration fee waivers during the abstract selection process for conferences and the participant selection process for courses. Results will be announced approximately 3 – 4 weeks before the event start date. Selection results do not impact your admission to the meeting. Registration fee waiver selection is based on your current work or study location, your motivation for applying, the reasons for needing financial support and the impact this event will have on your career. Childcare grants are allocated based on career stage, with priority given to early stage researchers.

Further details

A list of external funding opportunities can be found here, and information on attending a conference as an event reporter here.

For further information about financial assistance please refer to the FAQ page.

Guidelines

Please do:

• Use the event-specific hashtag as communicated during the event for any related tweets
• Tweet unless the speaker specifically says otherwise
• Be mindful of unpublished data
• Be respectful in tone and content

Please don’t:

• Share Slack, live stream or poster session links with others
• Broadcast the conference to unregistered participants
• Capture, transmit or redistribute data presented at the meeting unless presenter gives explicit consent
• Use offensive language in your posts
• Engage in rudeness or personal attacks

Additional information can be found in our Code of Conduct.

Health and well-being

It is important to stay healthy and move around, especially when you are attending an event virtually. We have put together a few coffee break stretches and yoga videos in the events Slack workspace for you to enjoy during the event.

How to ask questions

Questions during and after the talks can be asked in live streaming platform. The chair moderates the questions and shares them with the speaker. If time runs out or you think of a question later, you can use Slack to ask your questions in the dedicated session channels or via direct message.

Time zone

The programme is planned based on Central European Summer Time (CEST), unless otherwise stated. As many virtual participants are attending from around the world, we do our best to accomodate as many timezones as possible when creating the programme. Please take your time zone into consideration when planning your attendance.

Virtual event platforms

We are using a virtual event platform for this conference. More information about the platform will be shared ahead of the conference.

Speaker: Dr. Christoph Benedikt Westphalen, Comprehensive Cancer Center München

Immunotherapeutic interventions have revolutionised the treatment landscape in various malignancies. 

A more profound understanding of mechanisms underlying response and resistance to this class of agents will help to maximise patients’ benefit.

A range of potentially predictive biomarkers beyond PD-L1 and dMMR/MSI are under investigation to help identify patients qualifying for immune therapy. Furthermore, additional modalities such as digital pathology, artificial intelligence and functional imaging are coming of age. 

This seminar aims to give an overview on emerging biomarkers and technologies supporting personalised approached in immunotherapy. 

Speaker: Matteo Tosolini, PhD, Business Development Manager, Epigenomic Services Profiling, Diagenode, a Hologic Company

DNA methylation is an epigenetic mechanism characterized by the addition of a methyl group to the DNA, mainly at cytosines. It can occur at different genomic locations, and it can modify gene expression and function. The profile of DNA methylation is tissue-type and cell-type specific. A hallmark of cancer is the presence of an aberrant DNA methylation profile and this modification appears to happen early during carcinogenesis. For these reasons DNA methylation can be used as a cancer specific biomarker.

Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is composed by fragmented DNA released by different mechanisms into the bloodstream, mainly from apoptotic cells including healthy body cells as well as cancer cells. Analysis of cfDNA is very promising and has a great potential in cancer diagnostics given its noninvasive approach requiring only a blood or plasma sample in a process known as liquid biopsy. Interestingly cfDNA retains the genetic and epigenetic information of the tissue of origin. Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA), meaning DNA fragments that originate from cancer cells, can thus be used as potential biomarker for early cancer detection and diagnosis. The first proof of concept was published last year by the Circulating Cell-free Genome Atlas consortium (CCGA).

The analysis of methylated cfDNA by bisulfite sequencing does not come without challenges as those samples are in low quantity and poor quality because cfDNA is highly fragmented and the ctDNA is diluted by cfDNA from normal body cells.

In this webinar we will present how Diagenode can help by applying our workflow of DNA methylation biomarker discovery and validation in biofluids. We will start with Whole Genome Bisulfite Sequencing (WGBS) on cfDNA to determine the CpGs and the pattern of DNA methylation by using standard statistics as well as data mining approaches and to discriminate between different groups. We will proceed with the most adapted and fully customized Targeted Bisulfite Sequencing approach on cfDNA to validate the previously identified CpG methylation signature as biomarker and screen a higher number of patients.

Speaker: Anthony Schmitt, PhD., SVP of Science, Arima Genomics

Ependymoma is a tumor of the brain or spinal cord. The two most common and aggressive molecular groups of ependymoma occur mainly in young children and frequently recur after treatment.

Although molecular mechanisms underlying these diseases have recently been uncovered, they remain difficult to target. Innovative therapeutic approaches are urgently needed. 

Join this webinar to learn how we:

• Uncovered chromosomal rearrangements and regulatory mechanisms underlying aberrant expression of genes that are essential for ependymoma tumorigenesis.

• Identified potential novel therapeutic vulnerabilities in ependymoma and validated newly identified therapeutic targets through genetic or pharmacologic inhibition experiments. 

• Revealed tumor-dependency genes and pathways by oncogenic 3D genome conformations even in tumors that lack known genetic alterations.

Speaker: Argyris Papantonis, Dovetail Genomics

Recent work has established that 3D genome organization is causally linked to gene expression control, also in tumors and cancer. In addition, most cancer genomes are infested with structural variants (SVs) that contribute to oncogenesis and cancer progression via various mechanisms. We performed Hi-C experiments on glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs) from 26 patients to generate a resource of >13 billion contacts. We used this Hi-C data resource to detect and characterize patient-specific SVs, and then build individualized genome references.  We identified >1100 high-confident SVs, which were highly heterogeneously distributed across the 26 patient genomes. Following integration with gene expression data, and despite heterogeneity, we found partially recurrent effects on gene expression misregulation that could be linked to the formation of many hundreds of neo-TADs and neo-loops in these GSC genomes. Together, this is the first such comprehensive approach in leveraging 3D genome heterogeneity to understand regulatory dependencies in glioblastoma.