The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting is a cornerstone event for the cancer research community, bringing together leading minds in the field to share the latest discoveries and advancements. This year’s presenters and session chairs include a number of researchers supported by the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, as well as members of our Scientific Advisory Committee. Their groundbreaking work spans diverse areas, from understanding the fundamental mechanisms of cancer development and treatment resistance to pioneering novel therapeutic strategies. Here are some of the presentations we are excited to attend this year:

Friday, April 25

3-4:30 p.m.

Educational Session: Lineage Plasticity and Resistance to Cancer Therapy
Chair and Presenter: Cory Abate-Shen, PhD, co-PI, The Mark Foundation Center for Lineage Plasticity
Presentation: The basics for understanding lineage plasticity in cancer: Insights from studying in bladder cancer
Room S103 – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

Saturday, April 26

8-9:30 a.m.

Educational Session: Mechanisms Driving Sex Differences in Non-Reproductive Cancers
Chair and Presenter: Emerging Leader Award Winner Amy Moran, PhD, Oregon Health and Sciences University
Presentation: Sex hormones as mediators of cancer immunity
Room S401 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

8-9:30 a.m.

Educational Session: CAR-T Cells in Hematological Malignancies: Innovations and Pitfalls
Chair and Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee Mark Ruella, MD
Presentation: Engineering the next generation of CAR T-cells: Overcoming resistance and enhancing efficacy
Presenter: Mark Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee member and member of the NexTGen Cancer Grand Challenges team Catherine Bollard, MBChB, MD, Children’s National Health Center
Presentation: Harnessing T-Cell immunotherapy for blood cancers: Lessons from viral-specific T-Cells
Room S404 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

10-11:30 a.m.

Educational Session: Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy for Nonimmunologists: New-Generation Technologies for Immune-profiling and Spatial Imaging
Chair and Presenter: Endeavor Awardee Catherine Wu, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Presentation: Genomic and immunoproteomic approaches for cancer antigen discovery
Room S406 (Vista Ballroom) – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

12:30-2 P.m.

Educational Session – Cyclins that Don’t Cycle: Understanding and Targeting Transcriptional CDKs in Cancer
Presenter: Emerging Leader Award Winner Eric Fischer, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Presentation: Therapeutic targeting of transcriptional CDKs across low molecular weight modalities
Room S402 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

12:30-2 P.m.

Educational Session: Extrachromosomal DNA (ecDNA) in Cancer
Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee Andrea Ventura, MD, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Presentation: TBA
Room S403 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

12:30-2 P.m.

Educational Session: “FLASH”ing Tumors with Radiation: From Preclinical Models to Patient Trials in Less than a Decade
Chair and Presenter: Constantin Koumenis, PhD, member of The Mark Foundation Center for Immunotherapy, Immune Signaling, and Radiation, University of Pennsylvania
Presentation: Preclinical proton and carbon therapy FLASH RT studies
Room S101 – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

12:30-2 P.m.

Methods Workshop: Application of AI and Natural Language Processing to Advance Cancer Research and Treatment
Chair and Presenter: Emerging Leader Award Winner Eli Van Allen, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Presentation: Precision cancer medicine in the era of machine learning and clinical multi-omics
Room S100 BC (Grand Ballroom BC) – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

12:30-2 P.m.

Educational Session: T-Cell Engagers: Engineering, Translation, and Comparison with CAR-T Cell Therapy
Chair and Presenter: Emerging Leader Award Winner Yvonne Chen, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles
Presentation: Protein engineering considerations for bispecific T-cell engagers
Room S100 A (Grand Ballroom A) – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

2:30-4 p.m.

Educational Session: Extracellular Vesicles and Exosomes: Basic and Applied Biology Informing Translational Opportunities
Presenter: Emerging Leader Award winner Mario Suvà, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital
Presentation: Contribution of EVs in influencing cell-state heterogeneity in glioblastoma
Room S405 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

2:30-4 p.m.

Educational Session: Chemistry to the Clinic Part 3 of 3: Advances in Ligand Discovery to Enable Previously Intractable Targets
Presenter: Mark Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee member and ASPIRE Awardee Dan Nomura, PhD
Presentation: Reimagining druggability using chemoproteomic platforms
Room S406 (Vista Ballroom) – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

2:30-4 p.m.

Educational Session: Somatic Mosaicism as a Driver of Cancer and Inflammatory Diseases
Chair and Presenter: Mark Foundation-RUNX1 Research Program grantee Lucy Godley, MD, PhD, University of Chicago
Presentation: Somatic mosaicism as a driver of hematopoietic malignancies and inflammatory diseases
Room S101 – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

Sunday, April 27

9:30-11:30 a.m.

Opening Plenary
Presenter: Endeavor Awardee Catherine Wu, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Presentation: Addressing tumor heterogeneity: Personalized cancer vaccines
Hall B1 – McCormick Place North (Level 3)

1-2:30 p.m.

Immunotherapy and Precision Medicine in Hepatobiliary Cancer
Presenter: Emerging Leader Award Winner Hao Zhu, PhD, Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern
Presentation: Immunosurveillance regulates the landscape of somatic mosaicism and premalignancy in the liver
Room S403 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

3-5 p.m.

Gene Regulation and Transcription Factors
Presenter: Erica Pimenta, MD, PhD (lab of Emerging Leader Award Winner Eli Van Allen, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)
Presentation: Epigenetic dysregulation of IGF1 and PPARG2 in dedifferentiated liposarcoma
Room E352 – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 3)

3-5 p.m.

Advancing the Science of Childhood Cancers: From Bench to Bedside
Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee and Mark Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee member Elaine Mardis, PhD, Nationwide Children’s Hospital
Presentation: The molecular characterization initiative: Nationwide comprehensive clinical profiling of pediatric solid tissue malignancies at scale
Room E353 C – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 3)

Monday, April 28

10:15-11:45 a.m.

Clonal Hematopoiesis and Beyond: The Aging Immune System in Cancer
Presenter: Emerging Leader Award winner Jennifer Trowbridge, PhD, The Jackson Laboratory
Presentation: Microenvironment remodeling as a consequence of clonal hematopoiesis
Room S404 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

10:15-11:45 a.m.

Mechanisms and Targeting of Neuroendocrine Dysregulation and Inflammation in Cancer Cachexia
Presenter: Endeavor Award team member Tobias Janowitz, MD, PhD, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Presentation: Neuroendocrine regulation of nutrient intake and processing in cancer cachexia
Room E351 – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 3)

10:15-11:45 a.m.

Metabolism and Organelle Biology in Cancer
Presenter: Emerging Leader Award winner Kıvanç Birsoy, PhD, Rockefeller University
Presentation: Understanding the role of mitochondrial glutathione in tumor progression
Room S102 – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

10:15-11:45 a.m.

Harnessing the Microbiota to Transform Cancer Immunotherapy
Chair and Presenter: Mark Foundation-Israel Cancer Research Fund grantee Ravid Straussman, MD, PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science
Presentation: Characterizing the effects of the tumor microbiome on the response to immunotherapy
Room E450 B – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 4)

10:15-11:45 a.m.

Targeting Innate Immune Cell Subsets
Chair and Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee Mikala Egeblad, PhD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Presentation: Tumor-promoting neutrophils: Mechanisms and targeting opportunities
Room E450 A – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 4)

12:30-2 p.m.

Dharma Master Jiantai Advances in Biomarkers
Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee and Mark Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee member Charles Swanton, MBPhD, FRCP, FMedSci, FAACR, FRS, The Francis Crick Institute
Presentation: Ultrasensitive MRD detection: Results from TRACERx
Room S100 BC (Grand Ballroom BC) – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

12:30-2 p.m.

Application of Systems Biology, Functional Clinical Proteomics and Multi-Omic Approaches for Precision Oncology at the Bedside
Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee Peter Sorger, PhD, Harvard Medical School
Presentation: Using multiplexed spatial methods to study primary cancers and develop biomarkers of high-risk tumors
Room S406 (Vista Ballroom) – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

12:30-2 p.m.

Overcoming the Tumor Suppressive Role of the Innate Immune System within the Tumor Microenvironment
Chair and Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee Ignacio Melero Bermejo, MD, PhD, Clínica Universidad de Navarra
Presentation: TNF as a targetable orchestrator of an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment
Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee Taha Merghoub, PhD, Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Presentation: Harnessing neutrophils to overcome resistance to immune-based therapies
Room E451 – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 4)

12:30-2 p.m.

Immunometabolism and Metabolic Fitness in Tumors
Chair and Presenter: Endeavor Award team member Jeffrey Rathmell, PhD, Vanderbilt University
Presentation: Inflammatory drivers of the obesity-cancer connection
Room S105 – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

12:30-2 p.m.

Imaging the Cell Cycle
Chair and Presenter: Emerging Leader Award winner Sabrina Spencer, PhD, University of Colorado Boulder
Presentation: States of cell-cycle withdrawal
Room E450 B – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 4)

2:30-4:30 p.m.

Liquid Biopsy: Circulating Nucleic Acids
Presenter: Mark Foundation-Cancer Research Institute grantee Valsamo (Elsa) Anagnostou, MD, PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Presentation: Leveraging the cfDNA fragmentome to predict immunotherapy response
Room S105 – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

6:30-8:30 p.m.

Charting the Course: Innovating Cancer Drug Discovery in a Challenging Landscape—A Chemistry in Cancer Research Working Group Town Hall
Panelists: Mark Foundation CEO Ryan Schoenfeld, PhD; Mark Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee member and ASPIRE Awardee Dan Nomura, PhD
Room S103 – McCormick Place South (Level 1)

Tuesday, April 29

8-10 a.m.

Plenary Session: Targeting the Cancer Ecosystem
Chair: Emerging Leader Award Winner Mara Sherman, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Hall B1 – McCormick Place North (Level 3)

10:15-11:45 a.m.

Epigenetics and RNA Modification in Hematologic Malignancies
Presenter: Mark Foundation Scientific Advisory Committee member Scott Armstrong, MD, PhD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Presentation: Targeting the KMT2A: Menin complex in leukemia
Room S401 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

10:15-11:45 a.m.

Advances in Cancer Vaccines
Chair and Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee Darrell Irvine, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Presentation: Enhancing cancer vaccines through lymph node targeting
Room E451 – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 4)

5-6:30 p.m.

Testing Diet with the Rigor of Drug: Dietary Interventions to Improve Cancer Treatment Outcomes
Chair and Presenter: ASPIRE Awardee Jennifer McQuade, MD, MS, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Presentation: Considerations for dietary interventions in active cancer populations: optimizing trial design
Room E451 – McCormick Lakeside Center (Level 4)

Wednesday, April 30

10:15-11:45 a.m.

Hubs of Anti-Tumor Immunity: Lymph Nodes and Lymphoid Structures
Chair and Presenter: Emerging Leader Award winner Amanda Lund, PhD, New York University
Presentation: Programming the lymphatic state to maintain immune surveillance and limit regional metastasis
Presenter: Endeavor Award team member Tullia Bruno, PhD, University of Pittsburgh, UPMC Hillman Cancer Center
Room S401 – McCormick Place South (Level 4)

Be sure to check the official AACR program for updates, additional presentations, and poster sessions!