Virtual Conference
The Early Detection Summer School is an immersive and engaging program that covers themes relevant to cancer early detection research:
- Cutting edge cancer early detection science and technology
- Challenges and opportunities in cancer diagnostics
- Entrepreneurship and case studies of commercialization of early detection innovations
- The impact of patient and public engagement on early detection
- Precision early detection initiatives at global scale
Presenters include international experts on a variety of early detection related topics. Sessions may include research presentations, panel discussions or debates, members of the public and patient representatives, and opportunities to network with peers from different academic and industry organizations.
The ACED Virtual Summer School is open to anyone interested in cancer early detection including academic, healthcare, corporate, and trainee delegates. The program will provide valuable insight into early detection science and is therefore well suited to trainees from across the U.K. and U.S. member centers.
Symposium Schedule
Day 1: August 30
8am - 11:30am PST
Introduction to gold standard approaches/technologies for early cancer detection
Caroline Dive
Chair
Marilena Hadjidemetriou
Speaker
Paul Spellman
Speaker
Current approaches in early detection – where are we now
Utkan Demirci
Chair
Utkan Demirci is a tenured professor in the School of Medicine at Stanford University and serves as the Interim Division Chief and Director of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection in the Department of Radiology. Prior to Stanford, he was an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and a faculty member of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology division.
Professor Demirci received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering in 2005 and holds M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Management Science and Engineering. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, 24 book chapters, 7 edited books, and several hundred abstracts and proceedings, as well as having over 25 patents and disclosures pending or granted. He has mentored and trained hundreds of successful scientists, entrepreneurs, and academicians and fostered research and industry collaborations around the world. Dr. Demirci has been humbled by such honors as the NSF CAREER Award, and IEEE EMBS Early Career Award. He is currently a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and Distinguished Investigator of the Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research and serves as an editorial board member for a number of peer-reviewed journals.
The Demirci Lab group focuses on developing innovative extracellular vesicle isolation tools, point-of-care technologies, and creating microfluidic platforms for early cancer detection with broad applications to multiple diseases including infertility and HIV. Dr. Demirci’s lab has collaborated with over 50 research groups and industry partners around the world. His seminal work in microfluidics has led to the development of innovative FDA-approved platform technologies in medicine and many of his inventions have been industry-licensed. He holds several FDA-approved and CE-marked technologies that have been widely used by fertility clinics with assisted reproductive technologies leading to thousands of live births globally and in the US.
Dr. Demirci is a serial academic entrepreneur and the co-founder of DxNow, Zymot, Levitas Bio, Mercury Bio, and Koek Biotech and serves as an advisor to multiple early-stage companies.
Nitzan Rosenfeld
Speaker
Ruth Etzioni
Speaker
Compare/contrast early cancer detection career opportunities in the US and UK
Vik Bajaj
Moderator
Phil Crosbie
Panelist
Cyriac Roeding
Panelist
Cyriac Roeding is a Silicon Valley-based German-American entrepreneur and angel investor. He serves as the Co-founder and CEO of Earli, an early cancer detection and treatment firm based in South San Francisco. Earli is based on Synthetic Biopsy technology from Stanford, and is funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Perceptive Advisors, Casdin Capital, Sands Capital, Menlo Ventures, ZhenFund (China) and Marc Benioff. Cyriac is also a Co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Rewind Co, a diabetes type 2 reversal company. Through his venture initiative Roeding Ventures, he is invested in 20 startups in Silicon Valley, China, India and Europe, and in some of the world’s leading venture capital funds, including Founders Fund, Greylock, Bond, Andreessen Horowitz, DST, Kleiner Perkins, ZhenFund, IVP, Breakthrough Ventures, SV Angel. Roeding is the co-founder and former CEO of Silicon Valley-based shopkick, initially backed by Reid Hoffman/Greylock and Kleiner Perkins with its Apple iFund, which reached 20M users and drives $1B in sales for its partners annually. The company was acquired in 2014 by South Korean SK Telecom/SK Planet (Fortune 100) for $250 M. Shopkick was ranked one of America’s 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies by Inc. Magazine, and one of the world’s 10 Most Innovative Companies in Retail by Fast Company. Shopkick’s partners include Best Buy, TJMaxx, Home Goods, P&G, Kraft, Unilever, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Mondelez, Nestle, Revlon, L’Oreal, HP, Ford, Visa and MasterCard. Prior to shopkick, Cyriac spent a year at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the investors behind Google and Amazon.com, as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. At CBS, the largest U.S. television network, Cyriac built their mobile division as EVP of CBS Mobile, across entertainment, sports and news. In 1999, Cyriac co-founded mobile marketing firm 12snap in five countries in Europe, with Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, L’Oreal, adidas and MTV as partners. Prior at McKinsey & Company, he worked with global media and software players in Europe and Silicon Valley. Cyriac received the first Cannes Lion Awards for mobile in 2003/4. In 2007/8, Cyriac received the first Emmy Award nominations for mobile. He is the co-author of the Harvard Business School Press Book Secrets of Software Success. Fortune named him a 40 Under 40 Mobilizer.
Cyriac has two little sons and a daughter and is married to American TV and online producer Angel Roeding.
Wei Liang
Panelist
Dr Wei Liang obtained his bachelor degree in biology from Peking University, and PhD degree in biostatistics from USC. In the last 10 years, he devoted his time to designing novel clinical trials and analyzing clinical trial data, across a wide range of companies in medical devices, rare disease drug, targeted therapy, immuno-oncology therapy and early cancer detection technology. For most part of the last 10 years he was working in the west coast US, but in 2021 he moved to London to take the opportunity of working on one of the largest clinical trials in cancer screening and early detection (NHS-Galleri trail), sponsored by GRAIL and partnered with NHS England. He would like to share his experience and discuss the similarities and differences of the early cancer detection careers between the US and UK.
Day 2: August 31
8am - 11:00am PST
Clinical/molecular imaging modalities basics for cancer screening
Ted Graves
Chair
Dr. Edward “Ted” Graves is an Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology and, by courtesy, Radiology at Stanford University. He trained in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco before performing a postdoctoral fellowship in molecular imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. Joining Stanford in 2003, he has built a research program focused on the development and application of novel molecular imaging methods to study tumor and normal tissue radiation biology and to improve clinical radiotherapy. He works within the Divisions of Medical Physics and Radiation and Cancer Biology and also collaborates extensively with the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford. Dr. Graves also serves as the first program director of the newly created Biomedical Physics PhD program sponsored by the Departments of Radiation Oncology and Radiology. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts and is funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Department of Defense.
Jianghong Rao
Speaker
Shonit Punwani
Speaker
Recent advances in clinical/molecular imaging
Heike Daldrup-Link
Chair
Heike Elisabeth Daldrup-Link, MD, PhD, is a tenured Professor of Radiology, Director of the Pediatric Molecular Imaging Program, Co-Director of the Cancer Imaging Program and Associate Chair for Diversity in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University. Dr. Daldrup-Link is a Pediatric Radiologist with sub-specialization in cancer imaging. Her research program focuses on the development of novel imaging techniques for the detection and treatment monitoring of cancer in children. As a physician-scientist, she uncovered basic science principles in a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded basic science lab and brought the most promising medical imaging innovations to her patients' bedside. Dr. Daldrup-Link has published over 170 peer-reviewed research articles, 20 book chapters and editorials, six textbooks, and six patents, pending or granted. Dr. Daldrup-Link is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI, honor society for clinician-scientists), fellow-elect of the World Molecular Imaging Society (WMIS) and fellow-elect of the the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
Dr. Daldrup-Link significantly contributed to the diversification of the biomedical sciences through her tireless advocacy, mentorship and support of women and underrepresented minorities in the STEM field. She is widely known for her powerful reflections and opinion pieces on women in STEM (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11307-017-1124-4, Altmetric 90th percentile of 278,392 tracked articles of similar age in all journals). Among her many activities as Associate Chair for Diversity in the Radiology Department at Stanford University, she provides training on cultural competence, she mentors and sponsors racial/ethic minorities and she identifies diverse candidates for career opportunities. She publishes a diversity newsletter, which educates interested readers on important topics related to diversity in the field of biomedical imaging (http://raddiversity.stanford.edu/news/). In 2020, she was awarded the Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion Award from the Stanford Biosciences Program. On a national level, Dr. Daldrup-Link is member of the diversity initiatives of the Society for Pediatric Radiology and the World Molecular Imaging Society (WMIS), she advances diversity in STEM through her LinkedIn discussion platform with more than 2,000 members and she organizes an annual conference on diversity in the biomedical sciences (https://www.wmislive.org/) with more than 1,000 participants from 30 Universities. She significantly influenced the career of her many underrepresented minority mentees at Stanford and many other Universities around the world, who are leading scientists, clinicians and entrepreneurs in North America and around the world today.
Jeremy Dahl
Speaker
Sara Bohndiek
Speaker
Sarah Bohndiek completed her PhD in Radiation Physics at University College London in 2008 and then worked in both the UK (at Cambridge) and the USA (at Stanford) as a postdoctoral fellow in molecular imaging. Sarah joined the University of Cambridge in 2013, where she is jointly appointed as a Professor of Biomedical Physics in the Department of Physics and at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute.
The broad mission of Sarah’s interdisciplinary team, the VISIONLab, is to advance our understanding of tumour evolution using next-generation imaging sciences. They are particularly interested in the study of blood vessel formation in early cancer. The VISIONLab are also active in translating their findings into first-in-human clinical trials. Sarah was recently awarded the CRUK Future Leaders in Cancer Research Prize and SPIE Early Career Achievement Award in recognition of her interdisciplinary research innovation.
In addition to her research programme, Sarah also takes an active role in teaching and mentoring the next generation of scientists. She has acted as an ambassador for public engagement and interdisciplinary research training throughout her career and acknowledging her generosity in this regard, Sarah has received the MSCA Award for Nurturing Research Talent and been invited to deliver numerous talks on career development at both national and international workshops.
Patient and public engagement
Vivian Lee
Moderator
Susie Brain
Panelist
Diane Heditsian
Panelist
Bella Starling
Panelist
Peter Kapitein
Panelist
Day 3: September 1
8am - 11:30am PST
Stories of translation – from bench to bedside
Billy Boyle
Chair
Rebecca Fitzgerald
Speaker
Shan Wang
Speaker
Dr. Wang is the Leland T. Edwards Professor in the School of Engineering, Stanford University. He is a Professor of Materials Science & Engineering and jointly a Professor of Electrical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Radiology (Stanford School of Medicine). He directs the Center for Magnetic Nanotechnology and is a leading expert in biosensors, information storage and spintronics. His research and inventions span across a variety of areas including magnetic biochips, in vitro diagnostics, cancer biomarkers, magnetic nanoparticles, magnetic sensors, magnetoresistive random access memory, and magnetic integrated inductors. He has over 320 publications and holds 70 issued or pending patents in these and interdisciplinary areas. He was named an inaugural Fred Terman Fellow and was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Fellow of American Physical Society (APS), and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors for his seminal contributions to magnetic materials and nanosensors. His team won the Grand Challenge Exploration Award from Gates Foundation (2010), the XCHALLENGE Distinguished Award (2014), and the Bold Epic Innovator Award from the XPRIZE Foundation (2017).
Dr. Wang cofounded five high-tech startups in Silicon Valley, including MagArray, Inc., Nvigen, Inc., and Flux Biosciences, Inc. Nvigen has produced high performance magnetic nanoparticle kits for extracting cell free DNA and rare cells from blood samples. In 2018 MagArray launched a first of its kind lung cancer early diagnostic assay based on protein cancer biomarkers and support vector machine (SVM), which is now covered by Medicare. In 2019, Flux Biosciences launched a human trial to offer at-home testing of fertility based on hormones and magneto-nanosensors. Through his participation in the Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (as co-PI of the CCNE) and the Joint University Microelectronics Program (JUMP), he is actively engaged in the transformative research of healthcare and is developing emerging memories for energy efficient computing.
Dr. Wang obtained his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993, MS in Physics from Iowa State University in 1988, and BS in Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1986.
Leveraging AI and integrated diagnostics
Olivier Gevaert
Chair
Dr. Olivier Gevaert is an associate professor at Stanford University focusing on developing machine-learning methods for biomedical decision support from multi-scale data. He is an electrical engineer by training with additional training in artificial intelligence, and a PhD in bioinformatics at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He continued his work as a postdoc in radiology at Stanford and then established his lab in the department of medicine in biomedical informatics. The Gevaert lab focuses on multi-scale biomedical data fusion primarily in oncology and neuroscience. The lab develops machine learning methods including Bayesian, kernel methods, regularized regression and deep learning to integrate molecular data or omics. The lab also investigates linking omics data with cellular and tissue data in the context of computational pathology, imaging genomics & radiogenomics.
Yipeng Hu
Speaker
Sue Astley
Speaker
Creating an early detection startup – insights from founders
Ken Drazan
Moderator
Ken Drazan, MD is Chairman, CEO, and co-founder of ArsenalBio. Immediately prior to Arsenal, Ken held the positions of President and Chief Business Officer of GRAIL (Acquired by ILMN). Prior to GRAIL, Ken founded and was a Board Director of Verb Surgical (Acquired by JNJ). Ken also co-founded private equity firm Bertram Capital with $1.9B AUM. Ken is a Board-certified liver transplant surgeon with previous faculty appointments at Stanford and UCLA.
Sadik Esener
Panelist
AbdulKalam Shamsuddin
Panelist
AbulKalam M. Shamsuddin, MD, PhD is a Founder and Vice-President for Research at Early Detection, Inc. (www.cancer.us) and President of IP-6 Research, Inc. (www.ip-6.net). He was a Professor of Pathology at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, till June 2020.
Prof Shamsuddin graduated from Dhaka Medical College, University of Dhaka in 1972. Following Internship in Massachusetts and Residency training in pathology in Maryland, he was certified by the American Board of Pathology in 1977. In 1980, he received Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland for his work on colon carcinogenesis. He joined the faculty of the University of Maryland as an Instructor in 1977 and rose through the ranks of Assistant Professor and Associate Professor with tenure to become a full Professor in 1988.
He had invented a simple test for mass screening of cancers of the colon, breast, lungs, prostate, uterus and pancreas. He also performed pioneering experiments on the anti-cancer property of inositol and inositol hexaphosphate (IP6) - natural constituents of cereals and legumes such as rice, corn, beans etc. to show the efficacy of IP6 and inositol against different cancers in various experimental models. Prof Shamsuddin has written three books on the subject "IP6: Nature's Revolutionary Cancer Fighter" (Kensington Publishing Corporation, New York, 1998); “IP6 + Inositol: Nature’s Medicine for the Millennium” (Amazon.com, 2011); and “Inositol and It’s Phosphates: Basic Science to Practical Applications” (Bentham Science, Sharjah 2015). Aside from these Prof Shamsuddin has contributed numerous book-chapters and published over 200 scientific papers. He is a well sought-after lecturer nationally and internationally.
Marcel Gehrung
Panelist
Marcel Gehrung is co-founder and CEO of Cyted, a company working on digital diagnostic infrastructure to enable the early detection of disease. Marcel holds a PhD in Machine Learning in Healthcare from the University of Cambridge. In 2020, he raised £8.7M for Cyted to develop pipelines of digital and molecular tests for risk stratification to streamline diagnostic and clinical workflows. Cyted is initially focused on the early detection of oesophageal cancer, where the combination of an identifiable at-risk population and excellent therapy options offers a unique opportunity to improve patient outcomes and relieve pressures on healthcare resources.
Day 4: September 2
8am - 11:00am PST
Efforts in longitudinal cancer monitoring at scale
Jimmy Lin
Chair
Jimmy Lin, MD, Ph.D., MHS was the Chief Scientific Officer (CSO), Oncology at Natera (NASDAQ: NTRA), where he lead the development of new diagnostic technologies for cancer. Dr. Lin is also a 2016 Senior TED Fellow and Founder & President of Rare Genomics Institute, the world's first platform to enable any community to leverage cutting- edge biotechnology to advance understanding of any rare disease. Previously, Dr. Lin led the ClinOmics program in the Genetics Branch of the National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI). Before this, he led the computational analysis of the first-ever exome sequencing studies of cancer at Johns Hopkins and was a research instructor at Washington University in St. Louis. He has numerous publications in Science, Nature, Cell, Nature Genetics, and Nature Biotechnology, and has been featured in Forbes, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, TIME, and the Huffington Post.
Johannes Reiter
Speaker
Debate on what's next and close
Parag Mallick
Chair
Jamie Blundell
Speaker
If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Ryan Spitler, Stanford Program Manager.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the International Alliance for Cancer Early Detection (ACED) as well as each member center: Cancer Research UK, the Canary Center at Stanford University, the University of Cambridge, the Knight Cancer Institute at OHSU, University College London and The University of Manchester.