Keynote Speakers 2023

  • Prof. Dr. med. Michael Scharl

    Prof. Dr. med. Michael Scharl

    USZ - Gastroenterology and Hepatology

    The substantial impact of gastrointestinal diseases on quality of life and life expectancy requires explicit attention in translational but also basic research. Prof. Dr. Michael Scharl focuses on the elucidation of the role of the innate and acquired immune system in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal carcinoma. As the head of the Translational Microbiome Research Center, he is further promoting microbiomics research at the University Hospital Zurich by the functional characterization of the intestinal microbiome with respect to the pathogenesis of inflammatory, metabolic and malignant diseases.

    Title of the talk: The microbiome in cancer - only associations or therapy of the future?

    Read more about Prof. Dr. Michael Scharl’s research here:
    https://www.gastroscience.ch/

  • Prof. Dr. Lukas Sommer

    Prof. Dr. Lukas Sommer

    UZH - Institute of Anatomy

    Recently, cancer research focus shifted to cancer cell plasticity and re-appearance of stemness in the tumour tissue. Prof. Dr. Lukas Sommer lab is focusing on neural crest stem cells (NCSCs) during development of tissues and parallels between NCSCs and melanoma cells that re-activate stemness/embryonic programs during cancer formation and development. Their lab has already shown that in melanoma, cells acquire a transcriptional program that is present in NCSCs and supports cancer invasiveness, progression and resistance to treatment.

    Title of the talk: Cancer Biology Meets Neuroscience: Tumor-Associated Glia as Oncogenic Drivers in Skin Cancer

    Read more about Prof. Dr. Lukas Sommer research here:
    https://www.anatomy.uzh.ch/en/research/sommer/researchfocus.html

  • Prof. Dr. Lorenza Penengo

    Prof. Dr. Lorenza Penengo

    USZ - Institute of Molecular Cancer Research

    Ubiquitination plays an essential role in maintaining genome stability by regulating the DNA damage response (DDR), DNA replication and cell cycle control. Prof. Dr. Lorenza Penengo's research focuses on ubiquitin modifications in the regulation of genome stability. Her lab's aim is to understand the complexity of the ubiquitin system and how ubiquitination is used to signal DNA damage. This knowledge could possibly lead to potentiate commonly used drugs that induce genotoxic stress, as the ubiquitin system is a particularly attractive target for anticancer therapy due to its specific enzymatic activities that can be easily targeted.

    Title of the talk: Role of the ubiquitin system in the maintenance of genome stability

    Read more about Prof. Dr. Lorenza Penengo’s research here:
    https://www.imcr.uzh.ch/en/research/penengo.html

  • Prof. Dr. Johannes Zuber

    Prof. Dr. Johannes Zuber

    IMP - Research Institute of Moelcular Pathology Vienna

    The complexity and heterogeneity of human cancers make it challenging to design personalised and targeted therapeutic approaches. Prof. Johannes Zuber’s lab is developing novel tools such as CRISPR/Cas9 or targeted protein degradation and combining them with high-throughput screening approaches to identify cancer cell dependencies arising from their genetic background. Exploiting such dependencies holds a great potential for developing effective cancer therapies.

    Title of the talk: Deciphering the regulation and regulatory function of oncogenic transcription factors using time-resolved functional genetics

    Read more about Prof. Dr. Johannes Zuber research here:
    https://www.imp.ac.at/groups/johannes-zuber/

  • Prof. Dr. César Nombela Arrieta

    Prof. Dr. César Nombela Arrieta

    USZ - Experimental Hematology

    Hematopoiesis is a lifelong process by which the cellular elements of the blood are formed continuously to meet everyday demands and to be prepared for injury or infection. Prof. Dr. César Nombela Arrieta studies the hematopoietic process in the bone marrow of adult individuals. The bone marrow infrastructure is known to be formed by non-hematopoietic stromal cells, which take an important part in the regulation of hematopoiesis at all levels. Therefore, his group has established 3D microscopy techniques allowing to visualize the tissue components in situ, observe structural changes and evaluate functional crosstalk.


    Title of the talk: Regulation of healthy and pathological hematopoiesis by the bone marrow microenvironment

    Read more about Prof. Dr. César Nombela Arrieta’s research here:
    https://www.nombelaarrieta.com/

Sponsors of the student retreat 2023

  • University of Zurich
  • ETH Zürich
  • Roche
  • Promega
  • Microsynth
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