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Advances in Motion

Program Co-Chair, Keith Flaherty, MD, Recaps Key Highlights From AACR 2024

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  • Mass General Cancer Center faculty recently joined their international colleagues in San Diego for the 2024 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting to present their latest research and clinical advancements
  • Key sessions featured data science, chemistry advances, microbiome research, and the overall increase in intersections between research disciplines
  • AACR Program Co-Chair, Keith Flaherty, MD, recaps key highlights from the plenary and chemistry sessions

Mass General Cancer Center faculty recently joined their international colleagues in San Diego for the 2024 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting to present their latest research and clinical advancements. Presentations spanned a wide variety of topics, from cancer biology and translational and clinical studies to population science and prevention, survivorship, and patient advocacy.

Mass General Cancer Center's Director of Clinical Research, Keith Flaherty, MD, was a program co-chair of this year's meeting along with Christina Curtis, PhD, MSc, RZ Cao professor of Medicine, Genetics and Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University.

Below, Dr. Flaherty recounts highlights from a favorite major symposium as well as several plenary sessions that feature data science, chemistry advances, microbiome research, and the overall increase in intersections between research disciplines.

Figure 1

Keith Flaherty, MD, Director of Clinical Research, Mass General Cancer Center.

  • "In the opening plenary session, cancer research luminaries, Aviv Regev, PhD, MSc (Roche; formerly Broad Institute), Jakob N. Kather, MD, MSc (Technical University Dresden), Benjamin F. Cravatt, PhD (Scripps), and Nobel-laureate Carolyn R. Bertozzi, PhD (Stanford University) blew away the audience with talks on deconvolution of cellular networks, biologic insights gained from artificial intelligence-informed analysis of pathology slides, new advances in the application of chemical proteomics for probing cancer biology, and deconvolution of highly complex variable glycosylation in driving immune escape.
  • In a plenary session focused on spatial profiling, Susan Bullman, PhD (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center) gave one of my very favorite talks of the whole conference in which she deployed a variety of technologies to demonstrate unequivocally that intracellular bacteria shape cancer cell evolution and intratumoral heterogeneity.
  • Another plenary session represented the first time in more than two decades that the topic of metastasis biology was addressed at this level. Sarah-Maria Fendt, PhD, MSc (VIB-KU Leuven Center for Cancer Biology) gave a stunning presentation describing metabolically driven tumor cell plasticity. More specifically, aspartate in the interstitial fluid of a metastatic site, induced by primary tumors, promotes collagen secretion into the tumor microenvironment.
  • My favorite talk was given by Gerald Crabtree, MD (Stanford University). It described a dual-domain small molecule that is activated by BRD4 and consequently drives the transcription of pro-apoptotic BCL-6. In lymphoma models, this agent produced very striking tumor regressions.
  • Lastly, another plenary session gave a view into the future as four talks described the application of artificial intelligence in addressing cancer health disparities, drug discovery, and more refined application of existing oncology-targeted therapies."

Aside from the plenary sessions, there were several chemistry sessions whose seating capacities were exceeded. Among them were:

  • Advances in ADCs, Novel Payloads, and New Targets
  • Chemical Biology Approaches to Tackle Undruggable Targets
  • Drugging Transcription Factors & Targeting Aberrant Transcription in Pediatric Cancer (two separate sessions)
  • Targeting KRAS beyond G12C
  • Emerging Therapeutic Modalities in Induced Proximity beyond Protein Degradation
  • Molecular Glues, Protacs, and Beyond: Discovery and Early Preclinical Advances

Dr. Flaherty says, "As the titles alone indicate, there are major advances in multiple areas of chemistry that are rapidly expanding the types of molecules that can be engaged therapeutically. The major revelation across these sessions is that new molecular probes to better understand cancer biology are expanding at a far more rapid rate than drug-like molecules that are amenable to developing as therapies."

Learn more about Mass General Cancer Center research at AACR 2024

Learn more about Mass General Cancer Center

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