Tumour Microenvironment meeting and 3D Cancer Modelling workshop

Day 1:  

8th July – 3D Model Workshop

10.00    Coffee (Great Hall) and Registration (Council Room)
10.30    Introduction and Welcome (Senate Chamber)

Session 1: Focus on live tissue cultures and bioengineering

10.35    Invited speaker - Gareth Miles (Leicester)

11.05    Invited speaker - Eric O’Neill (Oxford)

11.35    Invited speaker - Darryl Overby (Imperial)
             Perfusable Tumour-on-Chip Models of Human Cancer

12.05    Talk selected from abstracts

12.20    Talk selected from abstracts

12.35    Lunch and poster viewing

Session 2: Focus on primary cells/organoids

14.00    Invited speaker – Paloma Ordonez-Moran (Nottingham) 
             Advanced 3D in vitro niches reveal how colon cancer cells acquire adaptive plasticity and chemoresistance

14.30    Invited speaker -  Chris Tape (University College London)
             Single-cell Phenoscaping of Tumour Microenvironment Organoids

15.00    Invited speaker. David Fernandez-Antoran (Cambridge)
             Human epithelioids provide new insights into tumour evolution during clinical therapies
15.30    Talk selected from abstracts

15.45    Talk selected from abstracts

16.00    Refreshment Break

Session 3:  Personalised therapies now and in the future

16.30    Keynote Speaker - Daniela Thommen (NKI)
             Ex vivo tumor fragments as precision medicine tools to personalize cancer immunotherapy

17.15    Q&A session. ‘What is the requirement for pre-clinical models?’ Open floor discussion and closing remarks to                   include representatives from UKRI, NC3Rs, regulators & industry:

             Chaired by Marion MacFarlane (MRC Cambridge)

18.00    Drinks Reception
             Networking and Poster viewing

Day 2:
9th July  - Tumour Microenvironment
Session 1:  Welcome and keynote

8.55    Introduction and welcome
9.00    Keynote Speaker: Peter Friedl (Netherlands)

Session 2: Spatial Mapping of the TME  

9.45    Invited speaker -  Ramanuj das Gupta (Glasgow)

10.15    Invited speaker - . Raza Ali (Cambridge)
             Spatial predictors of response to neoadjuvant IO therapy

10.45    Refreshment Break

Session 3: Host tumour interactions 

11.15    Invited speaker - Evangelos Giampazolias (Manchester)
             2025 BACR/AstraZeneca Young Scientist Frank Rose Award Winner                                                                                   Decoding host-microbiome interactions in cancer immunity. Killing cancer with a gut instinct

11.45    Flash talks – 3 min thesis- selected from abstracts

12.15-12.45    Sponsored Workshop 

12.45    Lunch and Posters

Session 4: Mechanobiology

14.00    Invited speaker - Luca Urbani (Kings College London)
             Extracellular matrix signatures in molecular subtypes of primary colorectal tumours and liver metastasis

14.30    Invited speaker - Bethan Psaila (Oxford)
             Fanning the flames: The TME in myeloproliferative neoplasms 

15.00    Talk selected from abstracts
15.00    Talk selected from abstracts
15.30    Refreshment Break

Session 5:  Metabolism

16.00    Invited speaker -   Ilaria Elia ( Kuleuven)
             Metabolic regulation of anti-tumor immunity in metastatic melanoma

16.30    TBC

17.00    Talk selected from abstracts

17.15    Talk selected from abstracts

17.30     Networking time

18.30    Drinks Reception in the Council room and foyer followed by the Conference Dinner in the Senate Chamber                       (opening onto lakeside)

Day 3:
10th July – Tumour Microenvironment

9.00    Keynote Speaker
           Douglas Hanahan (Switzerland)
           Intersections of cancer neuroscience and immunosuppression in the TME, and their hallmark co-targeting

Session 6:  Societal and hormonal influences on outcome

9.45    Invited speaker- Sheeba Irshad (Kings College London)

10.15    Invited speaker - TBC

10.45     Talk selected from abstracts

11.00    Refreshment break

Session 7:  Metastasis   

11.30    Invited speaker - Hector Peinado – CNB CSIC Spain
             Beyond the premetastatic niche: extracellular vesicle-inspired strategies to boost immunotherapy

12.00    Invited speaker - Victoria Sanz-Moreno, (ICR London)

12.30    Talk selected from abstract 

12.45    Talk selected from abstract 

13.00    Lunch and Poster Session

14.30     Invited Patient perspective:
              Imogen Westwood and her father; Life during and after childhood bone cancer   

15.00    Invited speaker. Gareth Thomas (Southhampton)                                                                                                                   Exploiting Fibroblast Plasticity for Cancer Therapy

15.30    Invited speaker. Lindy Durrant (Nottingham)

16.00     Talk selected from abstracts

16.15    Closing Remarks/Poster Prize and meeting end.