We are excited to invite you to the St. Anna CCRI Symposium on Cancer Evolution and Plasticity, taking place on January 22th, 2027. As the only research institute in central Europe dedicated exclusively to childhood cancer, St. Anna CCRI is home to 13 research groups working at the forefront of pediatric cancer research. Our symposium will bring together leading experts to explore the vital role of cancer evolution and plasticity, with a special focus on pediatric cancers.
Why Cancer Evolution and Plasticity?
Cells within a tumor are dynamic – they often mutate and change behavior, acquiring a competitive advantage compared to their neighbors. This process is fundamental to tumorigenesis, metastasis, treatment response, and relapse, and is underpinned by the principles of Darwinian evolution. Pediatric cancers follow the same rules as adult cancers, but offer a unique context of lower mutational burden, shorter evolutionary times, and a microenvironment being continuously reshaped by developmental processes. This Symposium aims to bring us a step closer to understanding how pediatric cancers evolve by bringing together experts in cancer evolution and plasticity across cancer types for an exciting day of discussions on how to advance pediatric cancer research.
The 2027 St. Anna CCRI Symposium will be devoted to this central topic, featuring international experts:
Guest Speakers
Céline Vallot
Céline Vallot leads the Dynamics of Epigenetic Alterations in Cancer laboratory at Institut Curie (Paris, France). Her group pioneers epigenomic technologies to investigate how chromatin states and epigenetic alterations influence tumor initiation, determine cellular identity and drive therapy resistance at the single-cell level.
Anton Henssen
Anton Henssen is Professor of Functional Cancer Genomics at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center of MDC and Charité Berlin (Germany), and a physician-scientist in pediatric oncology. His research focuses on the biology and evolution of extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in neuroblastoma and other cancers and its therapeutic targeting.
Sohrab Shah
Sohrab Shah is the Chief of Computational Oncology in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at MSKCC (New York, USA), where he develops single-cell and machine-learning approaches to study and predict cancer evolution. His group focuses on the cellular dynamics underlying therapy response in ovarian and breast cancer.
Francesca Demichelis
Francesca Demichelis is Vice-Rector for Research at the University of Trento (Italy), where she leads the Computational and Functional Oncology Lab. Her lab uses genomics to study cancer evolution with a special interest in cell free DNA, germline-somatic variant interactions and prostate cancer.
Registration
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Program
Find the program for the St. Anna CCRI Symposium on Cancer Evolution and Plasticity
Location
Van Swieten Saal of the Medical University Vienna; Van-Swieten-Gasse 1a, 1090 Vienna
Hosts
Organizers
Lisa Huto
Lukas Lach
Ines Midzan
Marion Zavadil
Contact
For further questions regarding the symposium do not hesitate and contact ccrisymposium@ccri.at