08.30 - 08.50

Welcome address

Marco Foiani, IFOM - University of Milan, IT

Marco Foiani is the Scientific Director and Head of the Genome Integrity Laboratory of IFOM– and co-founder of the IFOM-IEO Campus. He was the founder and vice-president of the European Nanomedicine Foundation (CEN). He is also member of the Scientific Advisory Board of AIRC, the Italian Cancer Research Association. Since 2002 he has been full professor in Molecular Biology at the University of Milan and professor at the European School of Molecular Medicine (SEMM). He is also a member of the editorial board of Cell and editor and reviewer for scientific journals with top impact factors. He was honored with internationally recognized memberships and awards, such as: the EMBO membership; the Academia Europaea membership; the New York Academy of Sciences membership; the Italian Society of Genetics (AGI) membership; the Italian Society of Biophisics and Molecular Biology (SIBBM) membership and award; the Biotec award; the Chiara D'Onofrio prize. Marco Foiani has a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Milan. His research interest focuses on the regulatory mechanisms that control genome integrity. He has more than 80 papers published in international scientific journals.

Gene diversification, genome stability and cancer - Chair: Marco Foiani

08.50 - 09.30

Keynote Lecture

An evolutionary view of the mechanism for immune diversity and genome instability

Tasuku Honjo, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, JP

Dr. Tasuku Honjo is Professor of Department of Immunology and Genomic Medicine, Kyoto University. He is well known for his discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase that is essential for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation. He has established the basic conceptual framework of class switch recombination starting from discovery of DNA deletion and S regions, followed by elucidation of the whole mouse immunoglobulin heavy-chain locus. His contribution further extended to cDNA cloning of IL-4 and IL-5 cytokines involved in class switching and IL-2 receptor alpha chain. Aside from class switching recombination, he discovered PD-1 (program cell death 1), a negative coreceptor at the effector phase of immune response and showed that PD-1 modulation contributes to treatments of viral infection, tumor and autoimmunity.

09.30 - 09.50

Regulation of local DNA damage - a Damocles sword

Svend Petersen-Mahrt, IFOM, IT

Prior to becoming the head of the DNA Editing in Immunity and Epigenetics Unit at the IFOM, Dr. Svend Petersen-Mahrt headed-up the DNA-Editing lab at Cancer Research UK. The work in his laboratory focuses on the notion that DNA instability - usually associated with cancer - provides an advantage to an organism. His lab analyses a novel family of enzymes - DNA deaminases - that mutate our genomes over a billion times a day. The interest in understanding targeted DNA mutations as a driving force in evolution has infected Dr. Petersen-Mahrt since his PhD training in the USA, and continued throughout his post-doctoral training at the BMC in Uppsala Sweden and the MRC-LMB, in the UK. His recent discovery in how DNA deaminases are regulated may have provided the answer to how estrogen causes cancer.

09.50 - 10.10

Regulation of recombination intermediate resolution in mitotic cells for genome stability

Dana Branzei, IFOM, IT

Dana Branzei studied at Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, where she obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology in T. Enomoto's laboratory. During her postdoctoral studies in K. Ohta's laboratory at RIKEN, Wako, Japan, she continued her work, with emphasis on small ubiquitin-related modifier (SUMO) and ubiquitin-mediated regulatory mechanisms controlling chromosome replication and recombination. In 2005, she moved to IFOM, Milan, Italy, as staff scientist, working on the mechanisms controlling intra-S phase DNA repair. From 2008, she became head of the DNA repair laboratory at IFOM. Her laboratory studies the mechanisms of DNA damage response and tolerance pathways and the impact that the chromatin structure/architecture and DNA topology have on the mechanism of DNA repair.

10.10 - 10.40

Regulating the p53 pathway

David Lane, Agency fo Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), SG

Professor Sir David Lane is currently the Chief Scientist of Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), where his main role is to advise and engage in scientific development across the Biomedical Research Council (BMRC) and the Scientific Engineering Research Council (SERC) at the strategic level. He is also the Director of the p53 Laboratory, which primarily focuses on research on p53. Professor Lane is one of the scientists credited with the landmark discovery of cancer gene p53 in 1979. p53, called the "Guardian of the genome" is considered the most significant of all the genes altered in cancer cells because mutations of the gene are known to cause almost 50% of all human cancers.

10.40 - 11.05

Recent advances in hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy: from microRNA regulation to targeted gene transfer

Luigi Naldini, San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy-HSR TIGET, IT

Luigi Naldini is Director of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy and the Division of Regenerative Medicine, Stem Cells and Gene Therapy of the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan, Italy. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Turin in Italy. He later trained at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, USA, where his work led to the initial description of lentiviral vectors for gene transfer into non-dividing cells. His laboratory has been developing novel approaches for genetic engineering, utilizing microRNA regulation, zinc finger nucleases and other emerging technologies, and has exploited each advance to gain insight into fundamental biological processes, such as stem cell activity, angiogenesis and immune modulation, and to promote new gene therapy approaches for treating human disease.

11.10 - 11.30

Coffee break

Stem cells and cancer stem cells - Chair: Pier Paolo Di Fiore

11.30 - 12.00

Regulation of self-renewal in cancer stem cells

Pier Giuseppe Pelicci, IEO - University of Milan, IT

Pier Giuseppe Pelicci is Co-Scientific Director of the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Chairman of the Department of Experimental Oncology at IEO, Scientific Director of the European School of Molecular Medicine and Full Professor of General Pathology at Milan University. Prof. Pelicci has made seminal contributions to the study of leukaemia (identification/characterization of PML-RAR and mutant-NPM; molecular mechanisms of retinoic acid and HDAC inhibitor treatments), translating his findings into clinical practice, and to the field of aging and aging-associated diseases in mammals (identification/functional characterization of the Shc family of signalling proteins; p66shc red-ox properties and effects on lifespan). Recently, he has been focusing on the biological and molecular characterization of normal and cancer stem cells, using preclinical and clinical models of leukaemia and breast cancer.

12.00 - 12.25

Mechanisms by which epidermal stem cells generate a tumor promoting microenvironment in the skin

Colin Jamora, IFOM - Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, IN

Dr. Colin Jamora received his BS degree in Biological Sciences (Immunology) from the University of California, Davis and his PhD in Biology (Cell Biology & Biochemistry) from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and the Rockefeller University in New York with support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship. Following this, he became an assistant professor of Biological Sciences and adjunct professor of Medicine at UCSD. In August 2012, he became director of the IFOM-inSTEM Joint Research Laboratory located at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India. He also maintains a research associate position in the Department of Bioengineering at UCSD.

13.00 - 14.00

Lunch

Inflammation and Cancer - Chair: Alberto Mantovani

14.00 - 14.25

Mechanisms linking inflammation and cancer

Alberto Mantovani, University of Milan - Istituto Clinico Humanitas, IT

Alberto Mantovani was born in Milan in 1948 where he graduated in Medicine in 1973. After specializing in oncology, he worked in England at the Chester Beatty Research Institute, London (1975-1976) and the United States, National Institutes of Health (1978-1979 and 1985-1986) and as Head of the Department of Immunology and Cell Biology of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan (1996-2005). He was then Professor of Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine, Vice Dean for Research, at the University of Milan, Scientific Director of Istituto Clinico Humanitas and President of the Humanitas Foundation for Research, which supports basic and clinical research in the field of immunology and its applications in the treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, oncology, gastroenterology, cardiovascular and neurological diseases. He was awarded national and international prizes for his scientific contributions. He is one of, or the most quoted and /or productive Italian scientist(s). The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) ranked him as one of 100 most quoted immunologists in the world over the last 20 years of the 20th century. As of Spring 2011 he has had over 46,000 citations and an H index of 126.

14.25 - 14.50

Colon cancer microenvironment that helps invasion and metastasis: studies using mouse models

Makoto Mark Taketo, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, JP

Makoto Mark Taketo obtained his MD, PhD from Kyoto University in 1978. After postdoctoral training in Rockefeller University, NY and Roche Institute of Molecular Biology NJ, he became a PI in Jackson Laboratory, ME, and Duke University, NC, USA. He returned to Japan in 1992 and worked for Banyu Tsukuba Research Institute (Merck), starting cancer research. He moved as a professor to the University of Tokyo and then to Kyoto University where he has been working on mouse models of colon cancer. He constructed Apc knockout mice, a model for human FAP, and demonstrated the role of COX-2 in adenoma expansion, and of TGF-β signaling in colon cancer invasion and metastasis. Recently, he has found a novel metastasis suppressor Aes that has turned out to be an endogenous inhibitor of Notch signaling, involved in the intravasation and extravasation of colon cancer cells.

14.50 - 15.15

Pin1 supports Myc-induced lymphomagenesis through suppression of a p53-dependent checkpoint

Bruno Amati, IIT - IEO, IT

Bruno Amati graduated in Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva, obtained his PhD at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in Lausanne, and was a postdoc at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) in London. He then started his research group at ISREC, spent several years at the DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, and in 2003 joined the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) in Milan. Since 2011, he has also been the Scientific Coordinator of the Center for Genomic of IIT@SEMM, an outstation of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) located on the IFOM-IEO Campus. His research focuses on the function of the c-Myc oncoprotein in growth control, tumor development and gene regulation.

15.15 - 15.35

Coffee break

Angiogenesis, cell motility and metastasis - Chair: Giorgio Scita

15.45 - 16.10

Roles of Rho-family GTPases in glioma invasion as visualized by FRET biosensors

Michiyuki Matsuda, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, JP

Michiyuki Matsuda, MD, PhD, graduated from The Faculty of Medicine at The University of Tokyo, in 1983 and trained as an anatomical and experimental pathologist for five years. Under late Professor Hidesaburo Hanafusa at The Rockefeller University, he found the SH2 domain-mediated recognition of phosphotyrosine-containing proteins. After going back to Japan, he isolated several important signaling molecules such as C3G, the first GEF for Rap1 GTPase, and DOCK180, the founder member of DOCK-family protein. In the past ten years, he has been developing FRET biosensors to visualize signal transduction in living cells and animals. He leads a research group “Multi-dimensional fluorescence live imaging of cellular functions and molecular activities” supported by MEXT, Japan.

16.15 - 16.35

RAB5 is a master regulator of tumor, mesenchymal invasive programs

Giorgio Scita, IFOM - University of Milan, IT

Giorgio Scita is a senior group leader at IFOM Foundation, Institute FIRC of Molecular Oncology, working on “Membrane And Actin Dynamics in the Control of Migratory and Invasive Strategies”, and Associate Professor of General Pathology at the Department of Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry of the University of Milan. He obtained his PhD in Food Chemistry and Technology at the University of Parma, Italy, in the Department of Biochemistry. He received his first postdoctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley working on Vitamin A metabolism. Next, he moved to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he worked on the integration between the retinoic acid receptor and Ras signaling pathways in Keratinocytes, under the leadership of Dr. Stuart Yuspa. In 1995, he returned to Italy, to the European Institute of Oncology (IEO), Milan where, under the supervision of Prof. Pier Paolo Di Fiore, he became interested in signaling to actin dynamics.

16.35 - 17.00

Transcriptional regulation of endothelial cell differentiation

Elisabetta Dejana, IFOM - University of Milan, IT

Elisabetta Dejana obtained her University degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Bologna, Italy. She worked in Canada, at McMaster University, Toronto. After that period she moved back to Italy where she built the Vascular Biology lab at Mario Negri Institute. She worked at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women' Hospital, Boston; Hopital Bicetre in Paris; Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem and Weitzman Institute in Rehovot, Israel. From 1993 to 96 she worked in Grenoble, France directing an INSERM Unit and CEA Laboratory at the Center of Nuclear Energy (CENG). She then returned to Milan to take part in the creation of IFOM Foundation. Today at IFOM she directs a research laboratory dedicated to the study of angiogenesis and its relevance in pathology. In addition to her research activity, she teaches as full professor of General Pathology at the University of Milan, School of Sciences. She is a member of the Editorial Board of several international scientific Journals and Committees and she has won several international prizes for her research career. She has published more than 280 papers in referenced international journals.

17.00 - 17.25

Active organization of membranes in living cells: How dynamic actin filaments organize membrane domains

Satyajit Mayor, National Centre for Biological Sciences, IN

Satyajit "Jitu" Mayor obtained his MSc in Chemistry from IIT, Mumbai, and his PhD in Life Sciences from The Rockefeller University, USA. He did his postdoctoral work at the Department of Pathology, Columbia University, New York. In 1996, Satyajit Mayor moved to the National Centre for Biological Sciences, (NCBS) Bangalore, India where he is now Dean of Faculty, and Professor in the area of Cellular Organisation and Signalling. At NCBS, he applies a multi-disciplinary approach combining cell biology with Physics and Chemistry to study how a cell may locally regulate membrane composition and control shape to engage in fundamental cellular processes such as signalling and endocytosis, respectively. Studies in his laboratory also focus on how signalling and endocytosis control tissue patterning during development.