Conference speakers

Find out about our conference speakers below.

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Chris Marine

Chris is Professor, Senior VIB Group Leader and Director of the VIB/KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology. He received numerous national and international awards and was elected EMBO member in 2020. His interests focus on the mechanisms by which cancer-specific non-mutational (epigenetic and (post-) transcriptional) events shape tumour evolution.

Kerrie Marie

Kerrie joined The University of Manchester as a Wellcome Trust ISSF Fellow in 2022, later being awarded with a prestigious University of Manchester Dean’s Prize award. Her lab focuses on understanding cell fate decisions in the embryonic melanocyte precursors of the neural crest and using these insights to shed new light on embryonic lineage cell states that are re-acquired during melanoma metastasis.

Prof Elizabeth Patton

Elizabeth is Professor of Chemical Genetics and group leader of the Medical Research Council Institute for Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM) Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh. Her lab uses chemical genetic approaches in zebrafish to investigate gene-drug interactions in melanocyte development, as well as in melanoma biology.

Dr Panagiotis Karras

Panagiotis is a postdoctoral fellow at the VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology (VIB-CCB) in Belgium. He is developing novel projects to address key pending questions in the field related to cellular plasticity in evolving melanoma ecosystems and how distinct cell states contribute to growth and metastatic dissemination.

Dr Erik Sahai

Erik is the head of the Tumour Cell Biology laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London. His research is focused on the spread of cancer through the body and responses to cancer therapy. In particular, his group is interested in stromal fibroblasts and their interplay with both tumour and immune cells.

Prof Victoria Sanz-Moreno

Victoria is Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at the Breast Cancer Now Toby Robins Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research. Combining cell biology, OMICs, mouse models, patient material and digital pathology, Victoria’s lab works on understanding how cytoskeletal dynamics in cancer cells control local invasion, dissemination, survival and outgrowth at the secondary site.

Prof Richard White

Richard is Professor and Senior Group Leader, Nuffield Department of Medicine and Ludwig Cancer Research at the University of Oxford. He is a physician-scientist who trained in medical oncology and cancer genetics. His research group has made fundamental discoveries about how neural crest programmes in melanoma affect response to oncogenes, how the anatomic position of the cell determines which oncogenes the cell responds to, and how microenvironmental cells such as adipocytes can promote metastasis.

Dr Rebecca Lee

Rebecca is a senior lecturer in medical oncology at The University of Manchester, The Christie NHS Foundation Trust and a Wellcome early career fellow. She is developing clinical trials to improve outcomes for patients with melanoma focussing on clinical decision-making based on circulating tumour DNA. In pre-clinical work, she is examining how local and systemic immune tolerance is induced through interaction between melanoma and cells within the liver microenvironment initially as a post-doc fellow in the laboratories of Prof Erik Sahai and Prof Mala Maini.

Dr David Adams

David is a senior group leader in the Cancer Ageing and Somatic Mutation programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and leads the Experimental Cancer Genetics Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of Pathologists, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) of the International Laboratory of Human Genome Research.

Dr Amaya Virós

Amaya is a Clinical Scientist/Honorary Consultant in Dermatology at Salford NHS Foundation Trust, with a practice in general dermatology and high-risk skin cancer.

Her research aims to understand the mechanisms that drive more metastatic skin cancer in ageing patients and to develop novel therapeutic approaches for melanoma treatment by age, in metastatic organs. Amaya also leads a BRC project to develop novel biomarkers that predict skin cancer outcomes.

Prof Sophia Karagiannis

Sophia is Professor of Translational Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy at King’s College London She is a translational cancer immunologist with academic and biotechnology experience in the USA and UK. She heads a cancer antibody discovery team focused on dissecting the crosstalk between patient immune cells and cancer and on the design of novel agents for solid tumours such as melanoma, ovarian and breast cancers.

Dr Evangelos Giampazolias

Evangelos is a Cancer Immunologist and Group Leader at the CRUK Manchester Institute, where he heads the Cancer Immunosurveillance group. His lab focuses on understanding the interactions of host cells with commensal microbes or damaged cells that enable the immune system to mount a response against cancer. His ultimate vision is to identify novel immune checkpoints that will be predictive of immunotherapy response and can be targeted to overcome therapy resistance in cancer patients.

Prof Ben Fairfax

Ben is Professor of Cancer Immunogenetics and Group Leader for Genomics of Inflammation and Cancer Immunology at the MRC Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford. As a clinician, he works in the Oxford Cancer Centre to treat skin cancer. In his lab, he researches variation between individuals in immune responses, especially those that are determined by genetics.

Dr Heather Shaw

Heather is a Consultant Medical Oncologist and Lead for the Medical Oncology Skin Cancer Service at University College London Hospital. She also works at Mount Vernon Cancer Centre in Northwood, London. Her main interests include the development of new strategies for the treatment of melanoma, including rare subtypes such as ocular, and novel therapies to overcome resistance to currently available treatments and maximise benefit for patients.

Dr Santiago Zelenay

Santiago is Senior Group Leader in the Cancer Immunology Branch of the Lydia Becker Institute of Immunology and Inflammation, and the Immunology theme of the CRUK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence. In 2017, he was awarded the CRUK Future Leaders in Cancer Research Prize and in 2019, along with co-authors of Zelenay et al Cell 2015, he received the inaugural BIAL Award in Biomedicine.

Prof Adam Hurlstone

Professor of Cancer Immunology, University of Manchester

Adam is Professor of Cancer Immunology and a Principal Investigator at The University of Manchester, based in the Lydia Becker Institute of Immunology and Inflammation within the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health. His laboratory investigates how to harness T cells to eradicate cancer, including understanding and reversing adaptive resistance to immune checkpoint inhibitors and engineering naïve T cells with novel antigen receptors to recognise tumour antigens and remain functional within the tumour microenvironment.

Dr Jonathan Lim

Jonathan is a clinical senior lecturer and honorary consultant medical oncologist in advanced immunotherapy and cell therapy for solid cancers at The University of Manchester and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. He is passionate about translational research and in developing novel advanced therapies, especially in the settings of early-phase clinical trials and first-in-human studies.

Prof Mark Middleton

Mark is Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine, Consultant Medical Oncologist at the Oxford Cancer and Haematology Centre, and Head of the Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford. He has overseen the development of internationally leading melanoma and upper GI clinical research groups and establishment of portfolios of early phase radiotherapy and haematooncology trials in Oxford.

Dr Brent O’Carrigan

Brent is a Consultant Medical Oncologist specialising in kidney cancer and melanoma at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. He is PI for a broad portfolio of academic and commercial clinical trials in both kidney cancer and melanoma, including cellular therapy trials. He is Clinical Cancer Lead for the NHS Genomics Laboratory Hub (GLH) for the East of England and East Midlands and member of NHS England’s National Genomic Test Directory working group.

Prof Christian Blank

Christian is Professor for Internal Medicine, especially clinical research on cancer immunotherapy (LUMC) and staff member at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI). In addition, he is professor at the University of Regensburg/Germany, and he is a founding and faculty member of the International Neoadjuvant Melanoma Consortium (INMC). His research interests broadly include neoadjuvant immunotherapies, targeted and biological response modifiers, and prognostic markers for cancer immunotherapies.