This meeting will explore the latest developments in the use of liquid biopsies for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Presentations will focus on circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) as key biomarkers that are transforming the landscape of oncology. These advancements hold the potential to improve early detection, dose selection, monitoring, prediction, and personalized treatment strategies for cancer patients.
Date: Tuesday 3rd December 2024
Time: 14:00 – 18:00
Venue: Medicon Valley Alliance, HUB3, Arne Jacobsens Allé 15, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark – Auditorium
Program
| 14:00 | Registration & networking |
| 14:30 |
Welcome and Introduction Katrine Brems Olsen, Network Manager, Medicon Valley Alliance |
| 14:35 | Utility of CTCs for cancer detection, monitoring, and treatment decisions Nora Pencheva, Director, Translational Medicine, Genmab |
| 15:00 | Advances in circulating tumour cells profiling for precision oncology Mette Ørskov Agerbæk, Assistant Professor, University of Copenhagen and Chief Scientific Officer, VarCT Diagnostics |
| 15:20 | Coffee break |
| 15:50 | Circulating tumor DNA liquid biopsies and the future of cancer monitoring Lao Saal, Head of Translational Oncogenomics Unit, Lund University and Founder, SAGA Diagnostics |
| 16:10 |
On-treatment disease monitoring in patients with newly diagnosed pancreatic cancer: A window of opportunity briefly left ajar? Karin Jirström, Professor and Vice Dean, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University |
| 16:25 | Ultrasensitive nucleic acid analysis in cancer management using liquid biopsies Anders Ståhlberg, Professor, Sahlgrenska University Hospital and Co-founder Simsen Diagnostics |
| 16:40 | Panel discussion Moderated by Jan Stenvang, CSO and Co-founder Scandion Oncology and Peter Ellmark, CSO, Alligator Bioscience AB |
| 17:15 | Networking and light snacks |
| 18:00 | End of meeting |
Speakers
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Nora Pencheva is currently a Director of Translational Medicine at Genmab, where she has worked for the last 7+ years. In her role, Nora overseers the translational medicine and clinical biomarker strategies for several bispecific antibody immunotherapies under clinical development for advanced solid tumors. Nora earned her PhD in Molecular & Cell Biology from The Rockefeller University in New York, where she conduced translational research on the molecular mechanisms of cancer metastasis leading to the identification of a new therapeutic approach that has since been tested in clinical trials. She performed postdoctoral research at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, where her innovative work on brain tumor biology was funded by prestigious fellowships from HFSPO and EMBO. |
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Mette Ørskov Agerbæk is an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen and serves as the CSO in VarCT Diagnostics. Her research focuses on translational biomarker discovery, specifically in the areas of circulating tumor cells, extracellular vesicles, and free circulating proteins. Through extensive collaborations with national and international clinical sites, Mette aims to advance cancer diagnostics and treatment strategies by bridging experimental findings with clinical applications. |
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Dr. Lao Saal graduated from Columbia University, New York, with MD and PhD degrees, and has over 25 years of cancer genomics research experience including at the National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Columbia University, and Lund University, where he is the Berta Kamprad Associate Professor in the Division of Oncology and heads the Translational Oncogenomics Unit. Based on research innovations, in 2016 he co-founded the spin-out company SAGA Diagnostics AB, which now has operations on two continents and focuses on the commercialization of ultrasensitive technologies for quantification of circulating tumor DNA (http://sagadiagnostics.com). He also is a strategic consultant for life-sci/biotech companies. Dr. Saal has published more than 70 articles in leading journals such as Nature Genetics, Science, and PNAS, which have been cited more than 13,000 times. |
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Karin Jirström is professor and senior consultant in pathology at Lund University and Region Skåne. Her research is focused on exploring the molecular heterogeneity and evolution of tumours that are particularly difficult to treat. |
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Anders Ståhlberg Professor in Clinical Genomics, is working as principal investigator at Sahlgrenska Center for Cancer Research, University of Gothenburg and at Clinical Genetics and Genomics, Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden. He is heading the Translational Genomics Platform at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, an infrastructure that aims to develop and implement next generation liquid biopsy-based diagnostics into health care. Anders primary research interest is to understand molecular mechanisms in tumor initiation, tumor development and tumor cell differentiation. The research is focused on sarcomas and cancer diagnostics in liquid biopsies. He has developed several experimental strategies for liquid biopsy analysis and single-cell/single-molecule profiling. Anders is also a co-founder of several biotech companies, like Simsen Diagnostics which is based on the SiMSen-Seq that allows allele frequencies < 0.1% to be detected. SiMSen-Seq is simple to perform, flexible in multiplexing and requires minimal DNA input. |
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Jan Stenvang is CSO in Scandion Oncology, which he co-founded in 2027. The company is currently testing their lead compound in Phase I and Phase II clinical trials. He is also Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen with 20 years of post doc/group leader experience and solid knowledge in basic research on resistance model systems in cancer. Throughout his career he has worked in the interface between basic translational cancer research and private biotech companies. He has been employed both in the private and the public sector and have through many project collaborations contributed to improved basic insight into cancer resistance mechanisms, initiation of investigator initiated clinical trials and development of new products for several companies. |
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Peter Ellmark joined Alligator Bioscience in 2008 and is CSO since 2021. He holds a PhD and an associate professorship in Immunotechnology at Lund University and has more than 20 years’ experience of developing antibodies for immunotherapy of cancer. Dr. Ellmark´s research interest is focused on developing mono- and bispecific antibodies, in particular CD40 and 4-1BB targeting therapies, for tumor directed immunotherapy of cancer. |
Deadline for registration is 29th of November
The MVA Oncology network
Joining the MVA Oncology Network is free of charge but is limited to Medicon Valley Alliance members. Non-member organizations and companies are welcome to attend one network event to evaluate the relevance in joining the network. For more information please contact Katrine Brems Olsen kbo@mva.org
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