Saturday, 10th February 36th Lorne Cancer Conference 2024

• A MAPK-controlled transcriptional repressor constrains T-cell mediated anti-tumor immunity - Johannes Zuber
• Immune pressure and tumour evolution in non-small cell lung cancer - Marie-Liesse Asselin-Labat
• A rare cell state underpins diverse mechanisms of adaptive resistance to CAR T-cell therapy in B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia - James A Kuzich
• Unravelling immune heterogeneity in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma using single-nuclei RNA-sequencing - Hue Mai La
• Selective targeting of integrins αVβ8 and αVβ1 within the dynamic ecosystem of pancreatic cancer to improve the overall anti-tumour response. - Dannielle Upton

Session Sponsored by

• Characterizing tumor ecosystems by single cell fate and spatial mapping of human breast cancer xenografts - Carlos Caldas
• The clone wars to initiate and maintain a malignancy  - Mark Dawson
• Lineage master regulator mechanisms in cancer biology - Christopher Vakoc
• In situ single cell analysis of clonal selection and microenvironment remodelling in blood cancer - Edwin Hawkins
• Widespread clonal dynamics and heterogeneity of cell plasticity across human cancer cell lines - Melanie A Eckersley-Maslin

Sponsored by

INTRODUCTION: While flow cytometry has been available for researchers and clinicians for decades to perform functional analyses on single cells and determine cellular phenotypes of large cell populations in blood, technologies to perform a similar analysis in situ – ie. in the tissue, the actual localization of most immune responses – are relatively new. 

METHODS: Our research teams at TissueGnostics and Queensland University of Technology have joined forces to combine TissueGnostics’ existing tissue cytometry technology platform and established knowhow with innovative AI solutions to establish The Virtual Histopathologist. This represents a tissue cytometry platform that allows to quantify immune responses where they happen – in the tissue. 

RESULTS: Tissue Cytometry permits to determine the in-situ phenotype of individual cells as well as histological entities, like glands, vessels or tumor foci. Applications include but are not limited to the exploration of immune responses in situ and the tumor microenvironment and/or the spatial organization of cellular subpopulations. Earlier attempts to analyse single cells in tissue have mostly been subject to visual estimation, or – at best – to manual counting for decades. To better understand the function of inflammatory cells in tumor development, type and number of inflammatory cells and their proximity to glandular/tumor structures have to be analyzed in-situ and correlated with disease state. Using TissueFAXS™ Cytometry the time-consuming and error-prone human evaluation of stained histological sections can be approached with an observer-independent and reproducible technology platform, offering a high degree of automation, paired with user interaction at relevant points of the analytical workflow (Fig. 1). 

Machine & Deep Learning are essential methodologies in contemporary research in general and for image analysis in particular. We will present preliminary data from the Virtual Histopathologist project on prostate cancer classification.

DISCUSSION & CONCLUSIONS: The TissueFAXS Cytometry platform incorporates Machine & Deep Learning algorithms. It can do end-point assays as well as live-cell imaging and time-kinetic experiments to measure enzyme activity. It also promotes tissue cytometry to a new level of quality, where complex cellular interactions, intracellular expression profiles and signal transduction cascades can be addressed on the single-cell level but still in histological context, empowering precision diagnostics. 

Speaker 1: Adj. Prof. Dr. Rupert Ecker
Digital Slide Scanning and Image Analysis

Speaker 2: Prof. Dr. Jyotsna Batra
Machine/Deep Learning on Microscopic Images

With the ability to read any length of DNA or RNA, short to ultra-long, nanopore sequencing captures more genomic variation — including structural variation and methylation — so you can get the context and clarity you need, every time. This comprehensive view powers the bigger and bolder questions reaserchers have always wanted to ask. And real-time data means rapid insight to time-critical results, all in a platform that sits on your lab bench. Hear first hand from Australian and New Zealand researchers on the power of uncovering what has been missing in genomic data.

Speaker 1: Martin Smith, UNSW Sydney
Epitranscriptomic profiling using deep native RNA sequencing reveals the molecular functions of lncRNAs essential for leukaemic cell survival

Speaker 2: Robert Day, University of Otago, Dunedin
Developing distributed ctDNA assays on Nanopore sequencers

Speaker 3: Rebecca Chesterfield, Oxford Nanopore Technologies
Updates from Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Chairperson: Warren Bach, Oxford Nanopore Technologies

• Age-related stromal changes drive breast cancer progression - Sheila Stewart
• Co-targeting of fibrotic and immune microenvironments to improve overall anti-tumour response in pancreatic cancer - Marina Pajic

Session Sponsored by

• CD4+ T cells orchestrate myeloid cells to remotely control immune-evasive tumours - Anthony C Buzzai

• How does the tumour suppressor p53 protect us from developing cancer? - Andreas Strasser