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International Early Cancer Forum | 21-22 November 2023. Berlin, Germany.
While yet there is no simple solution to curing cancer, we do believe when we catch cancer early, we have a greater chance of beating it.
The Berlin Early Cancer Forum (E-C-Forum) bring together researchers, biotech professionals, physician-scientists and engineers in early detection from multiple disciplines to share groundbreaking research and progress in the field, explore the challenges and opportunities of emerging technologies for early cancer detection, screening, and precision diagnosis.
The Forum is open to everyone in the community. It will provide the attendees with a wide range of presentations of preclinical, translational and clinical studies on all aspects of research. Focus areas cover both theory and practice from fundamental discovery to translation of novel early cancer detection and prognostication strategies. It will also become an opportunity to showcase novel approaches, new tools, smarter and more reliable methods that could be relevant to clinical problems.
Last updated on 30.05.2023 | The listing of a proposal does not imply an approval of a presentation. The final programme will be released here closer to the event.
Proper stratification of patients with high risk of relapse in early stage of estrogen-positive breast cancer is a known clinical problem. HAX1 protein has been described by our group as an important factor implicated in progression and metastasis of breast cancer. Diagnostic potential of HAX1 IHC staining of primary tumor samples in prediction of distant metastasis may be comparable with Oncotype DX multiple genes recurrence score assay. If further substantiated, HAX1 IHC staining may be a new, simple in use and inexpensive prognostic factor of disease recurrence in luminal breast cancer.
We report about the development of an innovative class of tailor-made biomimetics with high affinity for the targeted molecule and suitable to tackle the early onset of molecular changes in cells and to sequester defined molecules. These biomimetics are called nanotraps and are soluble receptors, prepared starting from a biocompatible, non toxic material, already in use in regenerative medicine, that is silk fibroin. The molecular recognition is entailed to silk nanoparticles by means of the molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) technique, that is a template assisted synthesis. These nanotraps, called bioMIPs, are capable of recognizing and sequestering targeted analytes hence would find uses in imaging and therapy.
Thyroid nodules are frequent but mostly benign, and postoperative rate of benign nodules reaches 90%. Therefore, there is a need for identification of reliable preoperative diagnosis markers for patients with thyroid cytology. In particular, there is a gap in studies of interrelationships between diurnal profiles of expression of circadian clock genes and TSH receptor in thyroid tissue exposed to different concentrations of TSH. These interrelationships might be investigated in future in vitro experiments on benign and malignant thyrocytes cultivated under normal and challenged TSH levels. Results of this investigation might help to bridge previous studies of preoperative biomarkers for thyroid carcinoma that explore diagnostic value of diurnal profiles of serum TSH levels, expression of its receptor and circadian clock genes.
Rare tumor-specific mutations in patient samples serve as excellent markers to monitor the course of malignant disease and responses to therapy in clinical routine, and improved assay techniques are needed for broad adoption. We describe herein - superRCA assays - which provides for rapid and highly specific detection of DNA sequence variants present at very low frequencies in DNA samples. Using a standard flow cytometer we demonstrate precise, ultra-sensitive detection of single-nucleotide mutant sequences from malignant cells against a 100,000-fold excess of DNA, to follow the course of patients treated for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and Lung Cancer patients.
Quanterix® has developed an ultra‐sensitive platform capable of measuring individual proteins at concentrations a thousand times lower than conventional immunoassays. The Single Molecule Array (Simoa®) technology at the foundation of this platform enables the detection and quantification of biomarkers previously difficult or impossible to measure, opening new applications to address significant unmet needs in life science research and diagnostics. Simoa® assays have the potential to be used to monitor cancer risk, identify early-stage cancers, and discriminate between benign and malignant cells. Simoa biomarkers also have the potential to be used prognostically to predict disease outcome, predict progression-free survival and monitor reoccurrence, as well as to be used to monitor sensitivity to therapy. Finally, Simoa technology and platforms have been designed with flexibility in mind to enable the discovery and testing of novel cancer relevant biomarkers. Simoa ultra-sensitive custom assays have been successfully developed and employed for several interesting applications ranging from tumor derived exosomes and miRNA quantification to study the PK/PD of anti-tumorigenic drugs.
The SuFIDA technology is a single molecule counting technology. It is an advanced ultrasensitive immunoassay technology that enables the detection of biomarkers that were previously undetectable down to lower femtomolar concentrations. SuFIDA is the evolution of the sandwich ELISA with greater selectivity, higher sensitivity and the digital readout using an optical imaging technique. In SuFIDA, capture antibodies are immobilized on a glass surface and bind the analyte from the sample. A fluorescence-labeled antibody is used as the detection probe, which recognizes an epitope on the target molecule that is not occupied by the capture antibody. Using highly sensitive TIRF microscopy, all individual fluorescence-labeled probes on the surface will be detected and virtually counted individually. By using an in-house developed analysis software, the huge image volumes are evaluated in a short time with various analysis functions.
Sepsis is a clinical syndrome characterized by dysregulated response to infection. It represents a leading cause of mortality in ICU patients worldwide. Although sepsis is in the point of interest of research for several decades, its clinical management and patient survival are improving slowly. Monitoring of the biomarkers and their combinations could help in early diagnosis, estimation of prognosis and patient’s stratification and development of new targeted treatment. This presentation recapitulates results of last 5 years of our collaborative translation research in the field. Promising new molecules such as Soluble Endoglin, Hepcidin, Ferritin or different cellular markers on immune cells could have predictive potential in Septic shock, critical Covid-19 and/or post-surgery patients.
Pancreatic cancer leads to a poor life expectancy (4-6 months) due to its silent nature. Thus, an early detection strategy would save a large number of lives. We focus on glycoprotein mucin 1 (MUC1), which is overexpressed in 90% of cancers while patients generate antibodies against it. We have developed a very sensitive detection system for these antibodies by generating an unnatural peptide with higher affinity for the antibodies, and binding the unnatural peptides to gold nanoparticles. In a clinical study, we found significant differences between pancreatic cancer patients and healthy volunteers (p<0.0001). A ROC analysis produced an area under the curve of 0.918, with 85% sensitivity and 90% specificity. We are looking for partners to commercialize this detection system.
Click on the dates below to see each day's program | Available from September-October 2023.