AACR COVID-19 and Cancer Meeting to Feature Anthony Fauci as Keynote Speaker

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will host a virtual meeting on COVID-19 and cancer July 20-22, 2020. Registration is complimentary for credentialed members of the media. Contact Kathleen Venango at [email protected] to register.

Speaker Highlights

The AACR Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer will feature presentations from government officials, academics, and industry leaders who are on the cutting edge of research related to COVID-19 and cancer. Highlights include:

Monday, July 20

• Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will present a keynote address titled “Coronavirus infections: More than just the common cold” at 10 a.m. ET.
• Benjamin tenOever, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will present a talk titled “The crosstalk between cellular transformation and the response to SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
• Kizzmekia S. Corbett, PhD, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, will speak on COVID-19 vaccine development. Her presentation is titled “Rapid SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine development enabled by prototype pathogen preparedness.”
• Louis M. Staudt, MD, PhD, National Cancer Institute, will present his talk, “Inhibition of Bruton Tyrosine Kinase in patients with severe COVID-19,” during a session on cancer drug repurposing to treat COVID-19.

Tuesday, July 21

• Solange Peters, MD, PhD, CHU Vaudois, Lausanne, Switzerland, will present a keynote address titled “Flexibility to sustain solidity: Addressing new vulnerabilities in cancer at the time of COVID-19.”
• Kevan Shokat, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, will present a talk titled “Leveraging new insights from cancer drug discovery to target viral host factors.”
• Arthur Caplan, PhD, NYU Langone Health, will present a talk titled “Ethics, cancer and COVID.”
• Douglas R. Lowy, MD, National Cancer Institute, will discuss COVID-19 diagnostics development in a presentation titled “When cancer research goes viral.”
• Patrick D. Hsu, PhD, University of California, Berkeley, will discuss CRISPR tests for the virus.

Wednesday, July 22

• John M. Carethers, MD, University of Michigan, will discuss cancer health disparities and COVID-19.
• Otis W. Brawley, MD, Johns Hopkins University, will present a talk on cancer prevention and early detection during the pandemic.
• Trevor Bedford, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, will give a keynote address on genomic tracking of the virus’s evolution and spread.
• Norman E. Sharpless, MD, director of the National Cancer Institute, will offer remarks and participate in a closing roundtable with AACR President Antoni Ribas, MD, PhD; AACR President-Elect David A. Tuveson, PhD, and AACR Past President (2018-2019) Elizabeth M. Jaffee, MD.

Session Highlights

Sessions will include symposia and forums on a wide variety of timely topics.

Meeting Program Chair and AACR President-Elect David A. Tuveson, PhD, will moderate two symposia featuring invited talks and highly rated proffered papers:

SYMPOSIUM 1: INTERSECTION OF THE BIOLOGY SARS-COV-2 AND CANCER
Monday, July 20, 10:50 a.m.-12:50 p.m. ET

• The crosstalk between cellular transformation and the response to SARS-CoV-2 infection
  Benjamin tenOever, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
• Therapeutic targeting of TMPRSS2 and ACE2 as a potential strategy to combat COVID-19
  Irfan A. Asangani, University of Pennsylvania
• Optimizing treatment for COVID-19 using computational modelling: Implications for cancer patients
  Lance L. Munn, Harvard Medical School
• A prediction of prostate cancer deaths spiking by SARS-CoV-2 infection
  Alakesh Bera, Uniformed Services University
• Systems approaches reveal shared pathways affected in SARS-CoV-2 infection and cancer
  Nevan Krogan, University of California, San Francisco

SYMPOSIUM 8: COVID-19 DIAGNOSTICS DEVELOPMENT
Tuesday, July 21, 2:20-4:20 p.m. ET

• When cancer research goes viral
  Douglas R. Lowy, National Cancer Institute
• Highly sensitive and full-genome interrogation of SARS-CoV-2 using multiplexed PCR enrichment followed by next-generation sequencing
  Chenyu Li, Paragon Genomics
• CRISPR tests for SARS-CoV-2
  Patrick D. Hsu, University of California, Berkeley
• Rapid isothermal SARS-CoV-2 detection using RT-LAMP 
  Brian Rabe, Harvard Medical School

Forums featuring conversations among leading experts will include:

• Regulatory and Operational Implications of Cancer Clinical Trial Changes During COVID-19
• Telehealth
• How Will We Bring Patients Back to the Clinic?
• How Cancer Researchers Are Applying Their Talents to COVID-19 Issues
• Public-Private Partnerships Poised to Address COVID-19
• Health Disparities

The full program is available here.

Additional Details

Contact Julia Gunther at [email protected] or 770-403-7690, or Matthew Burns at [email protected] or 610-618-0666, to schedule interviews with presenters or meeting organizers.

To register as press or for help accessing the virtual meeting platform, please contact Kathleen Venango at [email protected].