In This Section

Program

Please note that this meeting will take place as an in-person event in Vancouver and will not live-stream content for virtual participation. The meeting content will be recorded and made available as an on-demand program after the conference. Please see the registration page for details.

All presentations are scheduled to be live, in-person presentations at the date and time specified below unless noted otherwise. Program in progress.

*-Short talk from proffered abstract

[R] – Remote Presentation

Saturday, July 18

SUNDAY, JULY 19

MONDAY, JULY 20

Saturday, July 18

REGISTRATION

3-8 p.m. | Parq Salon Pre-Function Area

WELCOME AND OPENING Keynote

5-6:30 p.m. | Parq Salon EF

  • 5 p.m. | Conference Introduction and AACR Initiative
    Lillian L. Siu, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 5:15 p.m. | Welcome
    Andrew Futreal, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
  • 5:25 p.m. | Radical collaboration for rare cancers
    Jesse Boehm, Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • 5:55 p.m. | Introduction of Keynote Speaker 2
    Andrew Futreal
  • 6 p.m. | From pathognomonic mutation discovery to generalizable impact: rapid translation or arrested development    
    David Huntsman, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Panel Discussion: Rare Cancers, Broad Insights: Translating Niche Discoveries into Universal Oncology Advances

6:30-7:30 p.m.

  • Panelists:
    Lillian L. Siu, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Andy Futreal, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
    Taran Gujral, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington
    Brooke E. Howitt, Stanford University, Stanford, California
    Patrick Tan, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore
    David Huntsman, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
    Jesse Boehm, Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Topic | From Repurposing to Label Expansion: Accelerating Therapeutic Development in Rare Cancers
  • Topic | Generating Evidence When Numbers Are Scarce: Leveraging Real-World Data and Innovative Models in Rare Cancer Research

Poster Session A & Reception

7:30-9:30 p.m. | Parq Salon D

Sunday, July 19

Breakfast

7-8:30 a.m. | Parq Salon Pre-Function Area

Special Session: AACR Project GENIE®: Powering Rare Cancer Research Through A Real-world Clinico-genomic Registry

7:15-8:15 a.m. | Parq Salon EF

  • 7:15 a.m. | An overview of AACR Project GENIE®
  • 7:30 a.m.| AACR Project GENIE® rare cancer research use cases
    Shawn M. Sweeney, American Association for Cancer Research, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • 7:45 a.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Plenary Session 1: Genomic Drivers of Rare Cancers – Discovery and Translation

8:30-10:15 a.m.

Session Chair: Charles Keller, Children’s Cancer Therapy Development Institute, Hillsboro, Oregon

  • 8:35 a.m. | Drugging intrinsically-disordered transcription factor oncoproteins in childhood sarcoma
    Charles Keller
  • 8:55 a.m. | How to understand and defeat even rare cancers: Lessons from the patient-scientist partnership to defeat fibrolamellar carcinoma
    Sanford Simon, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York
  • 9:15 a.m. | DICER1-related tumor predisposition: genotypes, phenotypes and mechanisms
    William Foulkes, McGill, Montreal, QC, Canada 
  • 9:35 a.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Break

10:15-10:30 a.m.

Plenary Session 2: Navigating Genomic and Epigenomic Complexity in Rare Cancers

10:30 a.m.-12:15 p.m. | Parq Salon EF

Session Chair: Patrick Tan, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore

  • 10:35 a.m. | Gastric pre-malignancy: When is rare not rare?
    Patrick Tan
  • 10:55 a.m. | Chromatin and cancer: From mechanisms to emerging therapies
    Charles Roberts, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee
  • 11:15 a.m. | Chromatin reorganization in chronic active Epstein–Barr virus disease and extranodal natural killer/T-cell lymphoma
    Atsushi Kaneda, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan 
  • 11:35 a.m. | Discussion/ Q&A

Lunch on Own

12:15-2 p.m.

Plenary Session 3: From Bench to Bioinformatics: Advanced Modeling of Rare Cancers

2-4 p.m. | Parq Salon EF

Session Chair: Taran Gujral, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington

  • 2:05 p.m. | Eliminating “luck” – learning from rare cancer patients to improve outcomes
    Andrew Futreal, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas 
  • 2:25 p.m. | Mechanisms of resistance to kinase inhibitors in kinase fusion-driven infantile gliomas
    Eric Holland, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington 
  • 2:45 p.m. | Making agentic AI work for rare cancers
    Bissan Al-Lazikani, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas 
  • 3:05 p.m. | Functional precision oncology in rare cancers: From biobank to drug discovery
    Taran Gujral
  • 3:25 p.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Break

4-4:15 p.m.

Plenary Session 4: Diagnostic Challenges and Novel Classification Strategies in Rare Cancers

4:15-6:15 p.m. | Parq Salon EF

Session Chair: Brooke E. Howitt, Stanford University, Stanford, California

  • 4:20 p.m. | Challenges and updates in the classification of uterine mesenchymal tumors
    Brooke E. Howitt
  • 4:40 p.m. | Using DNA methylation to identify and classify rare cancers
    David Capper, Charité University Hospital, Berlin, Germany 
  • 5 p.m. | Cancer pathology: Rare just ain’t as rare as it used to be
    Alexander J. Lazar, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
  • 5:20 p.m. | Classification of T-lineage and lineage-ambiguous leukemias
    Charles G. Mullighan, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee
  • 5:40 p.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Break

6:15-6:30 p.m.

Proffered Talks Session

6:30-7:30 p.m | Parq Salon EF

Session Chair: Taran Gujral, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington

  • 6:30 p.m. |A comprehensive pan-sarcoma single-cell transcriptomic meta-analysis reveals shared molecular programs across subtypes*
    Maria Korah, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California
  • 6:40 p.m. | Breaking barriers in rare cancer research: Patient-partnered research via social media as a model for generating evidence in granulosa cell tumor of the ovary*
    Simon Chu Hudson Institute of Medical Research, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
  • 6:50 p.m. | The CCDI-COG Molecular Characterization Initiative (MCI) in rare pediatric cancers*
    Kenneth Chen, UT Southwestern, Dallas, Texas
  • 7 p.m. | Target discovery in rare cancers enabled by transcriptome-based virtual CRISPR screening*
    Srinivas Viswanathan, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 7:10 p.m. | Clonally inherited bivalent chromatin states in SS18::SSX–associated synovial sarcoma*
    Jakob Hofvander, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
  • 7:20 p.m. | Conditional reprogramming enables rapid establishment of patient-derived neuroendocrine tumor models for functional precision oncology*
    Xuefeng Liu, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

Poster Session B & Reception

7:30-9:30 p.m. | Parq Salon D

Monday, July 20

Breakfast

7-8 a.m. | Parq Salon Pre-Function Area

Special Session: Ultra-Rare Cancer Treatment Advancement (ULTRA) Program a New Public Private Partnership to Drive Development of Innovative Therapies

7:15-8 a.m.

  • Katherine (Kat) Lambertson, Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, Centreville, Virginia 

Break

8-8:15 a.m.

Plenary Session 5: Harnessing Immunotherapy for Rare Cancers: Progress and Pitfalls

8:15-10 a.m. | Parq Salon EF

Session Chair: Alexander N. Shoustari, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York

  • 8:25 a.m. | Immunotherapy lessons learned from non-UV exposed melanomas: Running (away from) hot and cold
    Alexander N. Shoustari
  • 8:45 a.m. | Immune targeting of a currently ‘undruggable’ driver in fibrolamellar hepatocellular carcinoma
    Mark Yarchoan, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
  • 9:05 a.m. | Gregg Morin, BC Cancer Research Institute, Vancouver, BC, Canada
  • 9:25 a.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Break

10-10:15 a.m.

Plenary Session 6: Breaking New Ground: Emerging Therapeutic Strategies for Rare Cancers

10:15–11:45 a.m. | Parq Salon EF

Session Chair: Paul Huang, The Institute of Cancer Research, London, United Kingdom

  • 10:20 a.m. | Decoding the sarcoma proteome to unlock new therapies and biomarkers
    Paul Huang
  • 10:40 a.m. | Turning the tide: How we doubled the survival of patients with renal medullary carcinoma
    Pavlos Msaouel, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
  • 11 a.m. | Targeting adaptive stress response for rare cancer precision medicine
    Gayathri Devi, Hollings Cancer Center, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina
  • 11:20 a.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Break

12 -12:15 p.m.

Plenary Session 7: Innovative Clinical Trial Design for Rare Cancers

12:15.-1 p.m. | Parq Salon EF

Session Chair: Razelle Kurzrock, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  • 12:20 p.m. | Precision oncology and the N-of-1 revolution: Rare cancers as a paradigm
    Razelle Kurzrock
  • 12:40 p.m. | Development of the first treatment FDA approved for women with low grade serous ovarian cancer (LGSOC)
    Rachel N. Grisham, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York 
  • 1 p.m. | On the right TRACK: Operationalizing a national, patient-centric, fully remote precision trial offering comprehensive genomic profiling and a molecular tumor board for rare cancers
    Jim Palma, TargetCancer Foundation, Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • 1:20 p.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Closing Remarks & Departure

2 p.m. | Parq Salon EF

  • Taran Gujral, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington