Program
#MechModels2025*Final program/schedule will be announced closer to the event.
Tuesday, July 29
| 12:00 p.m. | Meeting registration opens |
| 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. |
Session 1: Metabolic signaling |
| 4:00 p.m. | Liron Bar-Peled (Massachusetts General Hospital) Identification of druggable and redox vulnerabilities in cancer |
| 4:30 p.m. | *Anna Trimble (Salk Institute) Using ex vivo tissue slice culture to elucidate the role of the tumor microenvironment in PDAC tumor lipid metabolism |
| 4:50 p.m. | Shruti Naik (Mount Sinai) |
| 5:20 p.m. | Rushika Perera (UC San Francisco) Uncovering lysosome dependent mechanisms of cellular adaptation in cancer |
| 5:50 p.m. | *Kamini Singh (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) Decoding immune recognition in pancreatic cancer: Through the lens of the ribosome |
| 6:00 p.m. | Dinner for registered attendees |
| 7:10 p.m. | *Krushna Patra (University of Cincinnati) Metabolic remodeling of mitochondrial forms supports GNAS (Gαs) mutant pancreas cancer growth |
| 7:30 p.m. | Reuben Shaw (Salk Institute) |
| 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. |
Welcome Party in downstairs Foyer at Salk Institute |
Wednesday, July 30
| 8:00 a.m. | Breakfast |
| 9:00 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. |
Session 2: Genetics and epigenetics |
| 9:00 a.m. | Donita Brady (University of Pennsylvania) Unlocking the chemical space of cancer: A chemoproteomic strategy to map protein function and therapeutic response |
| 9:30 a.m. | *Shandon Amos (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Epigenetic reactivation of neutrophil differentiation to target acute leukemia |
| 9:50 a.m. | *Caterina Bartolacci (University of Cincinnati) Thioredoxin reductase 1 inhibition triggers ferroptosis in KRAS-independent lung cancers |
| 10:10 a.m. | Yael David (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) Targeting a new metabolism-epigenetic axis towards improved CAR T therapy in multiple myeloma |
| 10:40 a.m. | Coffee break |
| 11:00 a.m. | *Hannah Rasby (Corning Life Sciences) |
| 11:10 a.m. | Liling Wan (University of Pennsylvania) Chromatin-associated condensates in gene regulation and cancer |
| 11:40 a.m. | *Brandon Murphy (University of Utah) Elucidating the mechanisms sustaining DTPCs following MAPKi in LUAD |
| 12:00 p.m. | Mallika Singh (Revolution Medicines) Targeting the oncogenic state of RAS with tri-complex inhibitors |
| 12:30 p.m. | Lunch and Poster Session 1 |
| 2:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. |
Session 3: Tumor evolution |
| 2:00 p.m. | Kornelia Polyak (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) Breast tumor evolution |
| 2:30 p.m. | *Jennifer Loza (Yale University) Exploring the impact of neoantigen expression on lung tumor development |
| 2:50 p.m. | *Pablo Tamayo (UC San Diego) Computational modeling of cancer as an adaptive emergent complex system |
| 3:10 p.m. | Sandra McAllister (Harvard University) Overcoming age-related immune dysfunction and chemoresistance in triple-negative breast cancer |
| 3:40 p.m. | *Aria Vaishnavi (University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center) Unraveling the molecular mechanisms of radon and air pollution-induced lung cancers with novel mouse models |
| 4:00 p.m. | Ludmil Alexandrov (UC San Diego) Geographic and age-related variations in mutational processes in colorectal cancer |
| 5:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. |
Reception/Dinner at Gravity Heights (RSVP required; shuttle buses available at 4:45 p.m.) |
Thursday, July 31
| 8:00 a.m. | Breakfast |
| 9:00 a.m. to 12:10 p.m. |
Session 4: Tumor macroenvironment |
| 9:00 a.m. | Julio Aguirre-Ghiso (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) Disseminated cancer cell dormancy: Molecular triggers of entry and exit |
| 9:30 a.m. | *Shi Li (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center) Discovery of astrocytic checkpoints regulating disseminated tumor cell survival |
| 9:50 a.m. | *Bharti Garg (UC San Diego) Actin cytoskeleton dynamics in tumor cells mediate Immune-suppressive microenvironment and sensitize pancreas tumors to PD-1 blockade therapy |
| 10:10 a.m. | Cyrus Ghajar (Fred Hutch Cancer Center) Understanding and overcoming the numbers game that underlies disseminated tumor cell immune evasion |
| 10:40 a.m. | Coffee break |
| 11:00 a.m. | Sheila Stewart (Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis) Senescent stromal changes drive breast tumorigenesis and contribute to therapy-induced bone loss |
| 11:30 a.m. | *Nesli Dolcen (Stanford University) Genetic dissection of metabolic tumor suppression in vivo |
| 11:50 a.m. | *Florian Karreth (H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center) Non-canonical RNA binding of the MYBL2 transcription factor nucleates transcriptional condensates and promotes melanoma |
| 12:10 p.m. | Lunch and Poster Session 2 |
| 2:00 p.m. to 4:50 p.m. |
Session 5: Plasticity of cancer cells and their niche |
| 2:00 p.m. | Tuomas Tammela (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) Functional and molecular interrogation of a malignant high-plasticity cell state in carcinomas |
| 2:30 p.m. | *Henry Arnold (University of Utah) Opposing lineage specifiers induce a protumor hybrid identity state in lung adenocarcinoma |
| 2:50 p.m. | *Debadrita Bhattacharya (Stanford University) Investigating transcriptional regulators of intratumoral heterogeneity in small cell lung cancer |
| 3:10 p.m. | Cosimo Commisso (Sanford Burnham Prebys) Reprogramming the stroma: Metabolic plasticity and aging in pancreatic tumor evolution |
| 3:40 p.m. | Coffee break |
| 4:00 p.m. | *Peter Westcott (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) Tumor cell state and niche remodeling during benign-to-malignant transition in the colon |
| 4:20 p.m. | Shiri Gur-Cohen (UC San Diego) Lymphovascular niches as hubs of cancer plasticity and evolution |
| 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. |
Reception and Dinner Il Fornaio (RSVP required; shuttle buses available at 5:00 p.m.) |
Friday, August 1
| 8:00 a.m. | Breakfast |
| 9:00 a.m. to 12:40 p.m. |
Session 6: Immunity, inflammation, and cancer |
| 9:00 a.m. | Christine Moussion (Genentech) |
| 9:30 a.m. | *Melissa Reeves (University of Utah) Tumor cells drive the spatial organization of intratumoral immune cells and chemokine landscapes in heterogeneous tumors |
| 9:50 a.m. | *Alex Jaeger (Moffitt Cancer Center) KP/RiboMHC: A novel mouse model for proteogenomic analysis of tumor-specific antigen presentation in vivo |
| 10:10 a.m. | Michel DuPage (UC Berkley) |
| 10:40 a.m. | Coffee break |
| 11:00 a.m. | Yvonne Chen (UC Los Angeles) Engineering multi-pronged CAR-T cells for cancer therapy |
| 11:30 a.m. | *Zeda Zhang (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) Targeting dysregulated wound healing programs in cancer and fibrosis with immune engineering |
| 11:50 a.m. | *Helen McRae (Salk Institute) Epigenetic control of tumor associated macrophages – targeting the BAF nucleosome remodeling complex |
| 12:10 p.m. | Mikala Egeblad (Johns Hopkins University) Neutrophils drive vascular occlusion, pleomorphic tumor necrosis, and metastasis |
| 12:40 p.m. | Lunch |
| 1:40 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. |
Session 7: Last Hurrah! |
| 1:40 p.m. | *Kailash Chandra Mangalhara (Salk Institute) Mitochondrial complex II inhibition promotes tumor inflammation |
| 2:00 p.m. | *Yuwenbin Li (Salk Institute) Stromal education of pancreatic cancer cells drives an NFκB-mediated immune evasion program |
| 2:20 p.m. | *Suzanne Dufresne (Salk Institute) Leveraging autophagy and pyrimidine metabolism to target pancreatic cancer |
| 2:40 p.m. | *Jasper Hsu (Salk Institute) CA19-9 induces microenvironment remodeling and promotes immunosuppression in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma |
| 3:00 p.m. | Silvio Gutkind (UC San Diego) Understanding precancer to cancer transition at single-cell resolution: The Hippo in the room |
| 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. |
Reception on Red Brick Courtyard |
*Short talks