EMBL Cancer Genomics Conference – Heidelberg 15-17 Nov 2023

European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europe’s life science’s laboratory with 6 sites across Europe and more than 80 independent research groups. This year’s Cancer Genomics conference was held in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Wedge group showed up in full force with David Wedge, Laura Woodhouse, Jamie Weaver, Chay Paterson, Miaomiao Gao and Marian Love attending in person, and Aliah Hawari joining remotely from Manchester.

Keynote speakers included Rebecca Fitzgerald (University of Cambridge) and Jan Korbel (EMBL Heidelberg), as well as many talks given by both early stage and senior researchers. A wide variety of topics were covered including mutation and clonal selection, cancer evolution, genomic instability and mutational processes, tumour microenvironment and emerging technologies in cancer genomics. The conference had an intense programme of 42 short talks, 20 poster flash talks, 166 posters and more than 300 delegates in person with many more online.

The group enjoyed an engaging poster session and presented five posters demonstrating the diverse research projects ongoing in the Wedge lab. Laura presented her work on copy number signatures in KRAS mutant lung adenocarcinoma, Miaomiao on evolutionary trajectories and mechanisms of colorectal peritoneal metastasis formation and Marian on using multi-dimensional DPClust as a method for analysis clonal/subclonal relationships. Jamie presented his work on establishing a rapid autopsy program within the UK framework, and Chay covered his work on evolution on graphs and transition to cancer. The poster session was a great opportunity to network with other researchers and many gained invaluable feedback.

This meeting was a fantastic opportunity to keep up to date with the rapidly progressing area of cancer genomics and meet other researchers in our field. We look forward to the next biannual EMBL Cancer Genomics conference in 2025!