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In two days the European Cancer Congress 2013 (ECC2013) will start in the RAI in Amsterdam. There are sessions in different fields of oncology, including breast, lung and head and neck cancer, but also on basic science and nursing. A general theme during the meeting is personalized cancer treatment. With two days to go, MedZine gives you an overview of some important speakers.

Saturday September 28th the opening session is held. In this session three keynote speakers will talk about different aspects of personalized medicine in oncology. Prof. dr. Hans Clevers, president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, is the first speaker. Clevers will discuss his research on stem cells that are important in self-renewal and cancer.

The second speaker is dr. William Sellers from Harvard Medical School and Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research. He will discuss the current challenges in utilizing targeted therapeutics and approaches how to overcome these hurdles. The final speaker in this opening session is prof. dr. Charles Swanton from the London Research Institute, who will discuss intratumor heterogeneity and the effects thereof on biomarker discovery.

A keynote lecture will be given by dr. Pier Paolo Pandolfi from Harvard Medical School on Sunday. He will discuss ‘the Co-Clinical Project’, a new platform to facilitate the efficient translation of knowledge into therapeutics. Finally, on Monday prof. dr. Michael Baumann, the president of the European CanCer Organisation, will give a keynote lecture. He will discuss the recent developments in personalized radiation oncology.   


Sources: ECC2013