In This Section

Program

Please note that this meeting will take place as an in-person event in Boston 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.

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 selected from proffered abstract

[R] – Remote Presentation

TuesDAY, January 20

Wednesday, January 21

Thursday, January 22

Tuesday, January 20

REGISTRATION

3-5 p.m. | Essex Foyer

Welcome and opening keynote session

5-5:45 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

  • 5 p.m. | Welcome and Introduction
    Elena Castro, Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain
    Peter S. Nelson, Fred Hutchison Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington
    Patrick G. Pilié, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
    Eliezer M. Van Allen, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 5:15 p.m. | Prostate Cancer Research 2026: The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
    Francis S. Collins, Former Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH), Bethesda, Maryland

Panel Session/Debate

5:45-6:30 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Eliezer M. Van Allen, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts

Topics:

  • Can in vitro models adequately and accurately replace vertebrate animal systems for studies of prostate cancer?
  • Why is advanced prostate cancer immune recalcitrant? What is missing from our understanding, and are there approaches on the horizon?
  • For lineage “switch” after AR pathway ablation – why is this commonly neuroendocrine? Why not other lineages?
  • Panelists:
    Ana Aparicio, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
    Steven Balk, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts
    Laura Sena, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
    Adam Sharp, The Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, England
    Jean-Phillippe Theurillat, IOR – Institute of Oncology Research, Switzerland
    Ian Mills, University of Oxford, England, UK

Lightning Talks I

6:30-7:30 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Eliezer Van Allen, DFCI

Lightning Talks I Titles

Opening Reception and Poster Session A

7:30-9:30 p.m. | Staffordshire/ Essex North

Wednesday, January 21

Continental Breakfast

7-8 a.m. | Essex Foyer

Plenary Session 1: AI in Prostate Cancer Research

8-10:15 a.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Eliezer M. Van Allen, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts and Stephanie A. Harmon, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, Maryland

  • 8:05 a.m. | Therapeutic Discovery in the Digital Era 
    William R. Sellers, Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • 8:25 a.m. | Do androids dream of prostate cancer research?
    Eliezer M. Van Allen
  • 8:45 a.m. | AI-based imaging biomarkers
    Stephanie A. Harmon, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
  • 9:05 a.m. | A digital twin platform to inform and accelerate prostate cancer trials
    Ravi B. Parikh, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
  • 9:25 a.m. | Immune spatial organization predicts metastasis risk in aggressive localized prostate cancer*
    David D. Yang, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 9:35 a.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Break

10:15-10:30 a.m. | Essex Foyer

Plenary Session 2: Recent Advances in Risk, Detection, and Diagnosis

10:30 a.m.-12:35 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Burcu F. Darst, Fred Hutchison Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington and Franklin W. Huang, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California

  • 10:35 a.m. | Advances in using germline genetics to inform prostate cancer risk assessment and disease progression
    Burcu F. Darst
  • 10:50 a.m. | A framework for early interception of prostate cancer lineage plasticity
    Sylvan C. Baca, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 11:10 a.m. | AI-Driven Imaging for Prostate Cancer: Improving Detection, Risk Stratification, and Care
    Raquel Perez-Lopez, Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain
  • 11:30 a.m. | Mosaic loss of Y chromosome and risk of prostate cancer in two U.S. cohorts*
    Anqi Wang, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 11:40 a.m. | Monitoring tumor evolution and phenotypic diversity in metastatic prostate cancer using liquid biopsy profiling*
    Irene Casanova-Salas, Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, Spain
  • 11:50 a.m. | Development and validation of a semen-RNA based classifier for detection and risk stratification of prostate cancer*
    David Jarrard, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin
  • 12 p.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Lunch on own

12:30-1:45 p.m.

Plenary Session 3: Exploiting the Tumor Microenvironment and Immune Response

1:45-4:00 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Lawrence Fong, Fred Hutchison Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington and Paula Hurley, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tenseness

  • 1:50 p.m. | Myeloid-mediated mechanisms of immunosuppression within the prostate cancer tumor microenvironment
    Lawrence Fong, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, WA
  • 2:10 p.m. | Deconvoluting cellular interactions in prostate cancer metastatic niches that promote therapy resistance 
    Joshua M. Lang, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 
  • 2:30 p.m. | Harnessing the TGFβ-LRRC15 axis: A targeted radio-immunotheranostic strategy to predict cancer progression, deplete tumor-promoting mechanisms, and overcome immunotherapy resistance in aggressive malignancies
    David Ulmert, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California
  • 2:50 p.m. | Of Nerves and Cancer
    Gustavo E. Ayala, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas
  • 3:10 p.m. | Determining the role of IFNγ signaling in neuroendocrine prostate cancer progression and immunotherapy responses*
    Katherine C. Murphy, UMass Chan Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts
  • 3:20 p.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Break

4-4:15p.m. | Essex Foyer

Plenary Session 4: Androgen Receptor: New insights

4:15-6:30 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Patrick G. Pilie, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas and Adam Sharp, The Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, England

  • 4:20 p.m. | Balancing Act: Targeting the intersection of AR, DDR, and the tumor immune environment
    Patrick G. Pilie
  • 4:40 p.m. | Understanding the mechanisms by which cells recognize and respond to different levels of androgens has informed new therapeutic approaches for prostate cancer
    Donald P. McDonnell, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
  • 5 p.m. | Androgen receptor as a tumor suppressor in castration-resistant prostate cancer
    Laura Sena, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
  • 5:20 p.m. |How androgen receptor structural plasticity shapes oncogenic transcriptional programs
    Elizabeth V. Wasmuth, University of Texas Health at San Antonio, San Antonio, Texas
  • 5:40 p.m. | Differential coregulator usage mediates Androgen Receptor Splice Variant 7 activity in castration resistant prostate cancer*
    Pak Lok Ivan Yu, Vancouver Prostate Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada
  • 5:50 p.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Lightning Talks II

6:30 p.m.-7:15 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Patrick G. Pilie, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas

Lightning Talk II Titles

Reception and Poster Session B

7-9 p.m. | Staffordshire/ Essex North

Thursday, January 22

Continental Breakfast

7-8 a.m. | Essex Foyer

Plenary Session 5: Genomics and Epigenomics

8-9:45 a.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Massimo Loda, Weil Cornell Medicine, New York, New York and Adam Sowalsky, NIH-NCI, Bethesda, Maryland

  • 8:05 a.m. | A single-cell and spatial atlas of prostate cancer reveals the combinatorial gene programs involved in lineage plasticity and metastasis
    Massimo Loda
  • 8:25 a.m. | A single-cell and spatial atlas of prostate cancer reveals the combinatorial gene programs involved in lineage plasticity and metastasis
    Franklin W. Huang, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California
  • 8:45 a.m. | Actionable targets in epigenetically distinct subtypes of prostate cancer
    Michael C. Haffner, Fred Hutchison Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington
  • 9:05 a.m. | Deciphering the SWI/SNF complex: A crucial player in lineage plasticity and therapy resistance*
    Irene Paassen, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
  • 9:15 a.m. | Discussion/Q&A

BReak

9:45-10 a.m. | Essex Foyer

Plenary Session 6: Targeting the mechanisms of treatment resistance

9:45-11:10 a.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Martin E. Gleave, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada and Leanne Woods-Burnham, Morehouse School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia

  • 9:50 a.m. | Genomic Landscape and Pathologic Responses to ARPI doublets vs triplets in the Genomic Umbrella Neoadjuvant Study (GUNS)
    Martin E. Gleave
  • 10:10 a.m. | Overcoming treatment resistance in aggressive variant prostate cancers, one combination at a time
    Ana Aparicio, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas
  • 10:30 a.m. | Defining the Extracellular Vesicle Proteome of Metastatic Castration Resistant Prostate Cancer Patients treated with 177Lu-PSMA-617
    Justin Hwang, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • 10:50 a.m. | Epigenetically Informed Therapeutic Strategies for DNA-Hypomethylated Prostate Cancer*
    Pallabi Mustafi, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington
  • 11 a.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Break

11:30-11:45 a.m. | Essex Foyer

Keynote Session

11:45 a.m.-12:20 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Elena Castro, Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain

  • 11:45 a.m. | Introduction to Keynote Speaker
    Elena Castro
  • 11:50 a.m. | Dissecting the molecular drivers of lineage plasticity in prostate cancer
    Charles L. Sawyers, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York

Presentation of Awards to the Conference Cochairs

12:20-12:25 p.m. | Essex Ballroom

Presented by: Charles L. Sawyers, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York

Plenary Session 7: New models, targets and therapeutics

12:30-2:15 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

Session Chair: Elena Castro, Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain and Abhijit Parolia, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

  • 12:35 p.m. | Divergent FOXA1 mutations drive prostate tumorigenesis and therapy-resistant cellular plasticity
    Abhijit Parolia, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • 12:55 p.m. | Targeting MYC with small molecules
    Sarki A. Abdulkadir, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois
  • 1:15 p.m.| Precision nutrition potentiates radiotherapy in prostate cancer*
    David P. Labbe, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
  • 1:25 p.m. | Next Generation AR-Directed Therapies
    Elena Castro
  • 1:45 p.m. | Discussion/Q&A

Closing Remarks and Departure

2:15 p.m. | Essex Ballroom 

  • Peter S. Nelson, Fred Hutchison Cancer Center, Seattle, Washington