Program

The ANR will officially start Monday May 11th. One day before this exciting event, the organizing committee offers you an interesting workshop at the ANR venue, called the ‘Beurs van Berlage’, to kickstart your ANR2020 experience. A special ‘R2-Introduction workshop’ will be held Sunday the 10th of May at the ANR venue, the same day when ANR registration opens.

For those who are not yet familiar with the R2-platform and for those who want to learn more about R2, this workshop will be an excellent way to start the ANR2020 in Amsterdam. The R2 platform (http://r2.amc.nl) has its origins in the Neuroblastoma research field. The platform contains a large collection of publicly available neuroblastoma data, covering all types of omic data such as expression, methylation and even WGS data. R2 is a free, publicly accessible web-based genomics analysis and visualization platform allowing biomedical researchers, without bioinformatics training, to integrate clinical and genomics data. The R2 platform serves over 2.000.000 pages a year and has been cited in PubMed listed manuscripts over 1200 times, including high impact journals such as Nature and Cell.

This special workshop will cover the essentials of working with omics data in R2 from the neuroblastoma perspective and will be an excellent opportunity to learn how to use this versatile platform. Every participant will receive a printed tutorial book. The workshop will be offered free of charge. Registration is on a first come, first serve basis. An ANR registration is required and you will have to bring your own laptop to the workshop.

Interested in joining this free workshop? You can register your spot at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/anr2020-r2-introduction-workshop-tickets-94115430787. Seats are limited, so first come, first serve.

The R2 support team

This session will provide an update on the major treatment studies for high risk neuroblastoma and is intended for both clinical and basic researchers. This session should define the major questions in treatment of neuroblastoma, both from a basic and clinical point of view. Relapse treatment studies will be reviewed, as well as local tumor control by surgery and radiotherapy and the role of new imaging technologies.

Neuroblastoma is marked by inter-tumor heterogeneity defining stages with highly divergent outcomes, but also by intra-tumour heterogeneity which may underlie relapse development. New technologies currently redefine the normal development of the sympatho-adrenergic lineage. This session will integrate the latest insights in normal development, tumor heterogeneity and clinical behaviour.

Hans Clevers will give a keynote talk on organoid models of cancer as a novel tool for discovery. These model systems are offering unprecedented new possibilities to study tumor biology in many diverse aspects.

Single cell analysis is revolutionizing cancer research. The results for neuroblastoma will be presented in this session, offering insight in intra-tumor heterogeneity, immune and stromal infiltrate and clinical consequences.

This session will present successes and challenges of immune therapy in neuroblastoma including updates on anti-GD2 protocols and pilot studies. The session will include studies for other targets of antibody-mediated therapy and CART approaches that are being developed and in early clinical trials.

This session will focus on insights from novel layers of omics information of gene mutations, structural defects and other high throughput data. It will address the relation between these defects and relapse potential and clinical development, as well as functional studies of these defects. Potential drug targets and new bioinformatic tools to study them will be addressed.

Epigenetic networks are being clarified in neuroblastoma. They are linked to drug resistance and transcription factor networks that control neuroblastoma. This session will highlight these developments and the therapeutic potential of drugs interfering with epigenetics. A keynote lecture by Denis Hnisz who spearheaded insights in gene regulatory networks will introduce this session.

ALK inhibition is quintessential for the development of precision medicine in neuroblastoma: early development, unclear early clinical results followed by more effective strategies and the associated challenge of resistance. Many other targets are piloted from bench to bedside and will be discussed. A keynote lecture of Ruth Palmer will highlight ALK biology and how this discovery has impacted on current treatment.