2nd Young Scientist Cancer Congress 2024 (YS2C)

Professor Frances Balkwill, Ph.D.
OBE, FMedSci; Deputy Centre Lead, Group Leader, Research Theme Lead;  Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London

Professor Frances Balkwill is a British scientist, renowned for her research on the interaction between tumors and their microenvironment, particularly in the context of cancer growth and spread. Her work has been instrumental in deciphering the connection between inflammation and cancer. She is a prominent figure in translating this understanding into innovative treatments for ovarian cancer. Balkwill has also played a pivotal role in raising public awareness of scientific advancements.
Professor Balkwill was trained at Barts Medical Oncology Unit and the ICRF Lincoln’s Inn Fields. During her postdoctoral research, she focused on studying interferons and their role in cancer therapy. Her subsequent work delved into the intricate roles of cytokines, both in cancer promotion and inhibition. This research paved the way for broader studies on the cellular and mediator components of the complex and dynamic tumor microenvironment. Currently Professor Balkwill’s research is centered on ovarian cancer. Recently, her lab published a comprehensive profile of the human ovarian cancer microenvironment. They have also developed new mouse models and human multicellular tissue culture models, which they are using to investigate biological therapies that could prevent relapse and improve patient survival in ovarian cancer.
In addition to her scientific contributions, Professor Balkwill is actively involved in public engagement with biomedical science. She has authored several books for children on cell and molecular biology. She is the Director of the Centre of the Cell, an informal biomedical science center for children, educational website, and outreach project in East London, which has engaged over 180,000 participants since its inception in September 2009.
Balkwill serves as a non-parliamentary board member of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) and is a Trustee of Bloodwise. She was awarded an OBE in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. In 2015, the University of Bristol conferred upon her a Doctor of Science honoris causa, and in 2017, she received the Cancer Research UK Inspiring Leadership in Research Engagement Prize.

Doctor Mara Sherman, Ph.D
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City

Nicholas McGranahan, Ph.D
Cancer Genome Evolution Research Group, CRUK-UCL Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, Human Technopole, UCL Cancer Institute, London, UK

Nicholas McGranahan is an emerging computational geneticist based at the CRUK-UCL Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence, located in the UCL Cancer Institute. He completed his Ph.D. at the University College London under the advisory of Dr. Charles Swanton and Dr. Nicholas Luscombe. He pursued his research as a postdoctoral fellow at The Francis Crick Institute in the lab of Dr. Charles Swanton. Currently, he is leading a research group that develops computational methods to explore the cancer genome and antitumor immunity within an evolutionary framework.
Using state-of-the-art bioinformatics and evolutionary methods, his team aims at understanding how tumors are developing and how they might be treated. McGranahan’s work has is centered around exploring tumorigenesis as an evolutionary process. He has developed various tools to assist researchers in understanding the effect of genetic mutations accumulated during tumor development, but also use this knowledge to predict the tumor’s trajectory. This comprehensive approach might help in designing a more effective cancer treatments in the future. Dr. McGranahan exceptional work in the field of cancer evolution has granted him several prestigious awards, including: Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, Young Investigator EMBO Award and Sir Henry Dale Fellowship, Wellcome Trust.

Charles Herbaux, MD, PhD · PU-PH
Associate Editor, Nature Communications

Prof. Charles Herbaux is a MD PhD whose work is primarily focused on lymphoproliferative diseases. He obtained his MD in the University and CHRU of Lille in 2014. He did his PhD in 2017 working on pathophysiology of T prolymphocytic leukemia (T-PLL). In 2018, he joined the laboratory of Dr. MS Davids at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston as a postdoctoral fellow. While there, he focused on the development of a BH3 profiling method to assess the tumor cell’s dependency to anti-apoptotic proteins from the Bcl-2 family. Pr Herbaux come back to France in 2020, where he carries out his care and clinical research activities in the department of Clinical Hematology – CHU de Montpellier. He is also leading translational research projects within Pr Jérôme Moreaux’s team at Institute of Human Genetics. He is studying how cellular signaling cascades and cell death are affected by BCR and TCR pathway inhibition, and how these results correlate with clinical outcomes in trials. Ultimately, the aims of his clinical and research efforts are to help develop novel therapies that improve outcomes for patients afflicted with lymphomas and lymphoid leukemias.

Daniela Thommen, MD, Ph.D
Precision cancer immunotherapy Group, Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam

Daniela Thommen is a group leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. Her group focuses on understanding the determinants of response to checkpoint inhibitors, taking advantage of a unique ex-vivo tumor model, the patient-derived tumor fragment platform. Through transcriptomic, spatial and multiparametric flow cytometry analysis, her lab aims to identify predictive biomarkers of response to immune-checkpoint inhibitors. She has made major contributions to the field, characterizing thoroughly the lymphocytes compartment in solid tumors, especially lung cancer.
Supported by a MD-PhD fellowship, she pursued both medical training and completed a PhD in T-cell immunology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 2010 under the supervision of Prof. Biedermann. She continued her dual activity as a clinician scientist, through training in internal medicine and medical oncology and, in parallel, work as a research fellow in the lab of Prof. Zippelius at the Department Biomedicine in Basel.
In 2016, she joined the lab of Prof. Ton Schumacher at the Netherlands Cancer Institute with a postdoctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. After a few productive years where she continued to advance understanding of the heterogeneity in intratumoral immune activity, with a focus on T cell dysfunction, she started her own independent research lab at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in April 2020.
She is the recipient of several prestigious grants and awards, such as: the Swiss Pfizer Research Prize in oncology (2019), the Young Investigator Grant/Bas mulder award (2018) from the Dutch Cancer Society and a Melanoma Research Alliance Team Science Award, together with C. Blank and D. Peeper.

Michael Schmück-Henneresse, Ph.D
Group leader for Experimental Immunotherapy, Berlin Center for Advanced Therapies, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany

Michael Schmück-Henneresse is an expert in the field of Immunotherapy. He earned his Ph.D. in 2012 at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, and subsequently conducted postdoctoral research at Charité with Prof. Volk. Since 2020, he is leading a research group at Berlin Institute of Health (Charité and MDC).
Dr. Schmück-Henneresse’s research is dedicated to a profound understanding of how T cells orchestrate effective immune memory against viral infections or cancer and how this can be tailored for therapeutic purposes. In pursuit of this, his team pioneers the development of cutting-edge technologies aimed at detecting, characterizing, and genetically reprogramming T cell specificity. Simultaneously, they craft strategies to optimize the quality of T cells for therapeutic use.
Employing physiological models and state-of-the-art techniques, including high-content imaging, spectral flow cytometry, CyTOF, proteomics, and scRNA-seq, his team meticulously mimics and characterizes the optimal specificity, quality, potency, and longevity of therapeutic T cells. The overarching goal of Dr. Schmück-Henneresse’s research is to augment and reinvigorate optimal and sustained T-cell activity. By doing so, the ultimate aim is to introduce new treatment options characterized by heightened efficacy and safety for patients.

Joanne Clancy, Ph.D
Associate Editor in Nature Communications, Springer Nature, UK

Joanne joined Nature Communications in March 2022 as a Locum Associate Editor. Previous to this Joanne received an MSc(Res) in Translational Oncology at the University of Sheffield and went on to study for a PhD at University College London. Her doctoral research evaluated the effects of combining radiotherapy and a novel inhibitor of DNA damage repair on tumour immunogenicity. Joanne is based in the London office and handles mainly cancer therapy related submissions.

Location :

The 2nd Young Scientist Cancer Congress (YS2C) will take place at the Amphi Dumontet of University of Montpellier, from October 10th to 11th, 2024.

Address: Amphi Dumontet, Faculty Of Science De Montpellier, Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier, France

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