St. Anna CCRI Symposium 2025

We are excited to invite you to the St. Anna CCRI Symposium on Cancer Epigenetics, taking place on January 24th, 2025. As the only research institute in central Europe dedicated exclusively to childhood cancer, St. Anna CCRI is home to 15 research groups working at the forefront of pediatric cancer research. Our symposium will bring together leading experts to explore the vital role of epigenetics in cancer development and treatment, with a special focus on pediatric cancers.

Why Cancer Epigenetics?

Cancer epigenetics has emerged as a critical frontier in the fight against cancer. Unlike genetic mutations, epigenetic changes alter gene expression without changing the DNA sequence itself, offering new insights into how cancer develops and thrives. Many pediatric tumors are driven by alterations in transcription factors or chromatin regulators — key players in controlling the epigenome. Cancer cells are particularly vulnerable to the loss of specific epigenetic factors that are often dispensable in normal cells making these factors prime therapeutic targets. Several drugs targeting epigenetic regulators have already been approved for cancer treatment, with numerous others undergoing clinical trials. Moreover, the rewiring of the epigenome has been implicated in cancer cell plasticity and drug resistance, even in the absence of new mutations.

The 2025 St. Anna CCRI Symposium will be devoted to this central topic, featuring four international experts:

Guest Speakers

Iannis Aifantis
NYU, New York

Iannis Aifantis is the Herman M. Biggs Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology at NYU School of Medicine, focusing on the molecular mechanisms driving hematopoietic stem cell differentiation and transformation in leukemia. His research has uncovered key oncogenes, tumor suppressors, and signaling pathways, leading to the development of targeted therapeutic approaches for various malignancies, including T-ALL, B-ALL, AML, and MDS.

Judith Zaugg
Department of Biomedicine, Basel University

Judith Zaugg is a Group Leader at EMBL Heidelberg and DBM, Basel University, where she studies the genetic and epigenetic basis of complex traits and diseases. Her research applies computational tools to explore molecular phenotypes and inter-individual differences in drug response. Zaugg earned her PhD from EMBL-EBI and Cambridge University in 2011, followed by postdoctoral work at Stanford, and has led her group at EMBL since 2014.

Paola Scaffidi
IEO, Milan

Paola Scaffidi is a tenured Group Leader at the Department of Experimental Oncology at IEO in Milan, where she studies the role of epigenetic dysregulation in cancer. Throughout her career, she has studied the link between chromatin, gene expression regulation, and diseases like inflammation, stem cell dysfunction and cancer, establishing her own lab at the Francis Crick Institute in 2014 and being elected an EMBO member in 2024.

Alex Kentsis
MSKCC, New York

Alex Kentsis is an Associate Professor at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and Director of the Tow Center for Developmental Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. His research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of pediatric cancers, particularly acute leukemias, and developing improved therapeutic strategies, with over two decades of work in functional proteomics and genomics and numerous clinical trials based on his discoveries.