14th CNAPS International Symposium on CIRCULATING NUCLEIC ACIDS IN PLASMA & SERUM

Professor Ellen Heitzer is an EU registered Clinical Laboratory Geneticist at the Institute of Human Genetics at the Medical University of Graz in AUSTRIA, where she is heading the Research Unit for “Liquid Biopsies for personalized medicine in cancer”. She is one of the leading scientists in Austria dealing with liquid biopsies and in 2022 she was appointed Professor for Liquid Biopsies.

Prof. Heitzer is particularly interested in circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) analyses and her group has developed and applied a set of techniques for the analysis of ctDNA to non-invasively investigate tumor evolution or use ctDNA as a response marker. Her expertise has been recognized internationally, which is reflected by the invitations to international congresses or reviews and book chapters in international journals. As a steering committee member of the European Liquid Biopsy Society (ELBS) she advocates for the standardization and guidelines of LB approaches to enable a widespread clinical use. As the co-head of the molecular genetics branch of the D&F Institute for Human Genetics, Prof. Heitzer is also involved in routine diagnostics of hereditary diseases with a special focus on familial tumor syndromes. Moreover, she is driving the continuous development and implementation of molecular genetic methods, in particular next generation sequencing.

Professor Dave Hoon is the Professor of Saint Johns’ Cancer Institute (SJCI), Providence Health System in Santa Monica, CA, USA. He is the Director of Translational Research of SJCI, also Dept Translational Molecular Medicine, and SJCI Sequencing Center. His prime interests over the last four decades have been in molecular diagnostic approaches of metastatic cancer in tissues and blood in early and late-stage cancer patients and in monitoring treatment responses to identify molecular prognostic factors.

Prof. Hoon has been working on cell-free nucleic acids (cfNA) since 1997. First studies were reported (1999) on clinical utility of plasma ctDNA LOH related to tumor clinical stage and progression in melanoma patients. Over the years he then reported on different forms of plasma ctDNA such as for mutations, methylation, and amplification of solid tumors patients of various clinical stages and in monitoring during immunotherapy treatment. Studies were also focused on early detection of metastatic cancer. His group also have reported cfDNA in form of small size fragments of DNA ALU repeats and non-coding genomic methylation status of genomic DNA LINE1 in plasma for cancer detection and monitoring cancer progression in patients. Recently, his group has developed NGS assays to monitor ctDNA as well as cfmiRNA as alternative approaches for detection and prognostic biomarkers in patients’ plasma and urine from various cancer types. Prof. Hoon recent focus has been involved in developing new approaches of NGS ctNA assays to improve monitoring of immune checkpoint immunotherapy in metastatic melanoma patients.