What will the future of spatial biology look like? From the way hypothesis are generated and multiomic data are collected to advance drug discovery and develop targeted treatment, the new spatial paradigm has opened up new avenues and angles for accelerating scientific research.
The Spatial Biology Week™ represents a unique opportunity for the scientific community to connect with and learn from world-class experts. This 5-day virtual meeting explored a broad spectrum of topics from various research areas, showcasing spatial biology’s far-reaching and transformative impact. Watch the talks on-demand. Registration is free, check the full event agenda below.
Kick off the event with a day dedicated to the groundbreaking advancements powered by spatial biology in immuno-oncology, from basic to translational research. Learn about pioneering studies that are unraveling the mechanisms of immune responses in tumors and translating these findings into innovative therapies. Engage with leading scientists and researchers who are shaping the future of cancer treatment through precision immuno-oncology, driving patients closer to more effective and personalized cancer care.
Professor and Group Leader, University of Glasgow
Nigel Jamieson is a Clinical Senior Lecturer within the Institute of Cancer Sciences and an Honorary HPB surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He completed his undergraduate medical degree at the University of Glasgow when his interest in pancreatic cancer research began. He subsequently undertook a PhD funded by the Chief Scientist Office investigating gene expression signatures in pancreatic adenocarcinoma at the Beatson Institute. After completing his surgical training including observership periods at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York he undertook an international fellowship year of pancreas and liver surgery in Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, Australia where he gained significant experience in post-neoadjuvant therapy pancreatic resections. Grants from the Academy of Sciences and Pancreatic Cancer UK maintained his research output during his surgical training. He was recently awarded a Clinician Scientist Fellowship by Cancer Research UK and upon returning to Glasgow was awarded a Lord Kelvin and Adam Smith Leadership Fellowship from the University of Glasgow.
He has contributed to over 70 peer reviewed publications and with an active role in the development and management of the Precision-Panc platform, his primary research interest now focusses upon the interaction between the genomic landscape, the immune microenvironment and chemotherapy in patients with pancreatic cancer. Specifically, he will look to develop combination therapeutic strategies that target Immune evasion in pancreatic cancer.
EACR Roundtable: Pioneering in the unknown: how to navigate through the spatial biology
Senior Scientist, Weizmann Institute of Science
Itay Tirosh obtained his PhD in computational biology at the lab of Naama Barkai, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. From 2012 to 2017 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Regev and Golub labs at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and since August 2017 he has been a Senior Scientist back at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Tirosh lab is combining computational approaches and experimental single cell methods to understand the diversity of cells within human tumors, with a focus on glioma and head & neck cancer.
EACR Roundtable: Pioneering in the unknown: how to navigate through the spatial biology
Professor and Co-Director of the North Campus Flow Cytometry & Cellular Imaging Core Facility
Professor and Co-Director of the North Campus Flow Cytometry & Cellular Imaging Core Facility, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
I started my carrier at Texas A&M University learning about patterns in genes and proteins, allowing and facilitating subcellular protein trafficking. As I have progressed to MD Anderson Cancer Center, I have scaled to cellular trafficking attempting to understand the spatial distribution of cells in organ systems during disease. As in many parts of life, form equals functions. How our cells organize speaks to how they function and respond to their local environment. Bringing together multi-omics approaches allows for greater clarity in these imaging snapshots that are collected.
EACR Roundtable: Pioneering in the unknown: how to navigate through the spatial biology
Group Leader , Netherlands Cancer Institute
Roderick Beijersbergen (PhD) is group leader at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, and professor Functional Genomics at the University of Amsterdam. His research focusses on the development and application of large-scale functional genomic technologies. His recent work uses advanced cell-based screening technologies allowing for the interrogation of spatial, dynamic and temporal phenotypes using high end microscopy. He is heading the NKI Robotics and Screening Center and the Genomics Core Facility in which high throughput screening, NGS, single cell and spatial transcriptomics. He is also part of the NKI virtual spatial omics core providing spatial analyses for both research and clinic.
EACR Roundtable: Pioneering in the unknown: how to navigate through the spatial biology
Director, Spatial Molecular Profiling Core, Cedars-Sinai, Cancer Institute
Dr. Merchant studies the interaction of cancer and the immune system. Most specifically he focuses on how the tumor microenvironment can drive the progression of cancer and promote resistance to treatments. He is an expert in spatial profiling of the tumor micrenvironment and he is the founding director of the Spatial Molecular Profiling core facility at Cedars Sinai Cancer. Dr. Merchant's clinical interests are in the care of patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood cancers. He is co-Director of the Lymphoma program and leads several clinical trials that offer novel therapies for patients with blood cancers. His ultimate goal is to better understand the immune response to cancer to better predict which patients will respond to treatment with immuno-oncology drugs and cellular therapies and to identify new immuno-oncology targets in the future.
Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts General Hospital
Annie’s background as a physician-scientist provides a unique perspective to basic research and translation into the clinic. Her research interests lie in unraveling the complexity of the tumor microenvironment and immune landscape of cancers. She completed her MD at Heidelberg University and focused on investigating the role of the tumor microenvironment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in her graduate studies. After beginning her Postdoctoral Fellowship at MGH and HMS in 2023, she has been focused on investigating the biology of rare cancers such as adenoid cystic carcinoma and exploring new therapeutic approaches.
Immune landscape of adenoid cystic carcinoma: reversible downregulation of HLA class I
Research Associate Professor, University of Colorado
As the co-founder of the Human Immune Monitoring Shared Resource (HIMSR) at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, I ensure the generation of high quality human translational research data in immunology. The HIMSR provides expertise in high parameter immunologic assays that interrogate liquid and tissue biopsies, including multiplex tissue imaging and spatial transcriptomics. I direct an impressive team of researchers with over 53 years of experience in multiplex IHC, histology, antibody optimization, and image analysis. My personal research interests continue to be in discovering the mechanisms of immune disfunction and in establishing rationale for clinical trials that aim to improve outcomes in patients.
Managing Director, Translational Spatial Profiling Center (TSPC), Heidelberg University Hospital
Dr. Denis Schapiro is Managing Director of the Translational Spatial Profiling Center (TSPC) and Research Group Leader at the Heidelberg University Hospital focusing on spatial omics technologies and analysis.
Spatial omics of acute myocardial infarction reveals a novel mode of immune cell infiltration
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Zahraa Rahal earned her medical degree from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she works under the guidance of Dr. Humam Kadara. Zahraa's research focuses on mapping the ecologic evolution of lung cancer at its earliest stages of development. She is interested in mapping epithelial and immune cues along the pathogenic continuum of normal lung tissue and up to lung adenocarcinoma. As an aspiring physician-scientist, she is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of cancer research and committing her career to serving patients with cancer.
Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Research in Head and Neck Oncology
Associate Professor and Vice Chair for Research in Head and Neck Oncology, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute
Dr. Antonio Amelio is the Vice Chair of Research in Head and Neck Oncology at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute. He oversees the Amelio Lab within the Cancer Biology & Evolution Program, focusing on the molecular mechanisms behind tumor development and progression. His lab employs light-based technologies and bioinformatics to examine cell signaling, gene expression, and their impact on cancer cell behavior. Dr. Amelio's interdisciplinary research particularly targets adaptive stress signaling networks in oral and head and neck cancers, aiming to understand these pathways to inform future therapeutic interventions.
Mapping immune cell infiltration in an HPV+ OPC mouse model using spatial multiomics profiling
Instructor, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
I study bone and soft tissue sarcoma at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Given over 100 different sarcoma subtypes, my range of scope is narrowed to desmoplastic small round cell tumors, Ewing sarcoma, and liposarcoma. To that end, my approach has been to comprehensively characterize these disease entities through a multi-modal omics approach using single-cell/nucleus RNA- and/or ATAC-sequencing, spatial transcriptomics/proteomics. Second, we aim to dissect biology and tumor microenvironment and determine signatures or drivers of tumorigenesis that could enable therapeutic targeted therapies. Third, instead of systemic cytotoxic therapies, we aim to propose methods to repair cancer cells. I am developing a mesenchymal stem cell differentiation model to determine the regulators that promote differentiation toward osteoblasts, myoblasts, and adipocytes. My hypothesis is that studying the regulators of differentiation can help us infer and target the error in differentiation amongst different sarcomas with possible mesenchymal origins.
Revealing the tumor heterogeneity of desmoplastic small round cell tumors through spatial analysis
Resident in Neurological Surgery, Northwestern University
Mark Youngblood is currently a 6th year neurosurgery resident at Northwestern University, and is interested in using spatial and single-cell approaches to gain new insights on brain tumor biology and therapeutic vulnerabilities. He completed the MD/PhD program at Yale University under the guidance of Murat Gunel, where his thesis focused on epigenetic changes that underlie meningioma formation and tumor progression. He is currently completing an infolded clinical fellowship in skull base surgery, and working in the laboratory of Amy Heimberger to study the immunological features of meningiomas.
Spatial profiling to discover immuno-therapeutic targets in meningiomas
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Northwestern University
Dr. Palacin is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Dr. Sita Lab at Northwestern University. She obtained her Biotechnology degree by the University of Vic, Barcelona, Spain in 2016 and her master’s degree by the San Pablo-CEU University, Madrid, Spain in 2017.
Assessing glioblastoma tumor dynamics and therapeutic impacts through Spatial Immunofluorescence
Professor, Goethe University Frankfurt
Prof. Dr. Katharina Imkeller is a renowned expert in the field of neuro-oncology and immunology, currently serving as a Professor for Translational Neurooncology and Quantitative Immunology at Goethe University Frankfurt since 2024. She leads a junior research group in Computational Immunology at the Mildred Scheel Early Career Center (MSNZ) Frankfurt, where her work focuses on integrating computational and experimental approaches to understand immune responses in cancer.
Director of Metastasis Research, Center for Colorectal Cancer, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Karuna Ganesh, MD, PhD, is a physician-scientist focused on investigating and treating metastatic gastrointestinal cancers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, USA. She received her undergraduate and MD/PhD degrees from the University of Cambridge/MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, UK, where she studied mechanisms of antibody diversification with the late Professor Michael Neuberger. She trained in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School and in medical oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Joan Massagué. Dr. Ganesh leads a research laboratory in the Molecular Pharmacology Program, is an Attending Physician in the Gastrointestinal Oncology Service, and Director of Metastasis Research in the Center for Colorectal Cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering. The Ganesh laboratory employs (1) hypothesis-generation using transcriptomics, epigenomics and spatial/histological analysis of patient samples of primary and metastatic gastrointestinal (GI) cancer with (2) mechanistic dissection in cutting-edge patient-derived organoid models, including co-cultures with immune/stromal cells (3) genetically engineered and orthotopic transplantation models of metastatic GI cancer. By combining murine and clinically relevant patient-derived models, they seek to define the molecular mechanisms that underpin the phenotypic plasticity of metastatic cancer, and the co-evolution of the tumor microenvironmental response to dynamically emerging tumor regenerative states. The goal of the Ganesh laboratory is to identify crucial signaling nodes required for metastatic plasticity that can be therapeutically targeted to improve outcomes for patients with advanced cancer.
Computer Vision Scientist, Lunaphore
Vytautas has an extensive background in state-of-the-art imaging modalities and truly believes that seeing is believing. During his studies, he worked on developing and applying various cutting-edge single-cell imaging techniques ranging from scanning-probe microscopy to single-molecule localization microscopy. He graduated with a Ph.D. in Biotechnology and Bioengineering from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2021. Vytautas joined Lunaphore in 2022 and since then he has been working on bringing the analysis tools for multi-plex immunofluorescence images to accelerate the adoption of spatial biology.
Navigating the multiplex image analysis workflow: from images to data-driven insights
