HCC Breast & Gynecologic Cancer Symposium

On Friday, April 10, 2026 the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers and the Breast and Gynecologic Programs in the HCC will sponsor a day-long symposium to highlight breast and gynecologic cancer research at Harvard.

We invite all HCC researchers who are doing work in breast and gynecologic cancers, including fellows, post-docs, and junior faculty to attend and to submit abstracts.

Registration is closed

2026 Agenda

April 10, 2026

Joseph B. Martin Conference Center

77 Avenue Louis Pasteur, Boston MA, 02115

Time	Details \| DOWNLOAD AGENDA
7:45 am	Sign-In, Continental Breakfast, Poster Set-Up
8:30 am	Welcome / Purpose of Symposium Susan F. Smith Center Leaders
8:40 am	J. Dirk Iglehart, M.D., Visiting Scholar Lecture (35-40 min talk, 10 mins questions) Perspectives from the Unusual: Demystifying Special Breast Cancer Subtypes Fresia Pareja, MD, PhD Assistant Attending, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Co-Director, MSK Lobular Breast Cancer Program Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
9:30 am	SESSION I: Genomics Chair: Gerburg Wulf, MD
9:30 – 10:15 am	3 oral presentations (10 mins each; 5 mins questions) Kristen Brantley, PhD – Tumor genomics in young patients with metastatic breast cancer Alexandra Indeglia, PhD – Targeting transcriptional drivers of plasticity and resistant cell states in triple negative breast cancer Gilbert Salloum, PhD – Integrin Alpha-V is a targetable vulnerability in epithelial ovarian cancer
10:15 am	Coffee Break (15 min)
10:30 am	SESSION II: Risk, Prevention & Disparities/Clinical Chair: Heather Eliassen, ScD
10:30 – 11:15 am	3 oral presentations (10 mins each; 5 mins questions) Xiaying Kuang, PhD – Metabolomic aging in relation to breast tumor molecular features Jun Nishida, PhD – Development of Lalba mRNA-LNP vaccine for breast cancer prevention Joshua Yang, BS – Replication Stress Induced Nucleotide Excision Repair Deficiency Creates a New Therapeutic Vulnerability in BRCA2-Mutant Tumors
11:15 am	Gynecologic Cancer Keynote Lecture (35-40 min talk, 10 mins questions) Precision Medicine: Leveraging (Epi)Genotype-Driven Vulnerabilities in Ovarian Cancer Rugang Zhang, PhD Professor and Chair, Department of Experimental Therapeutics CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research The John M. O’Quinn Endowed Chair in Cancer Research Associate Director for Discovery Science, CCSG The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
12:05 – 1:15 pm	Lunch and Open Posters (12:05 – 1:15pm)
1:15 pm	SESSION III: Drug Resistance/Animal Models Chair: Patricia Donahoe, MD
1:15 – 2:00 pm	3 oral presentations (10 mins each; 5 mins questions) Marie-Anne Goyette, PhD – Functional Screening of Novel HER2 Heterogenous Breast Cancer Model Ramya Ravindranathan, PhD – Unraveling the Therapeutic Potential of PARG and Dual PARG-USP1 Inhibition in Ovarian Cancer Oyku Sumer, BS, MSc – Therapy-induced senescence reprograms apoptotic dependencies to drive ovarian cancer drug resistance and recurrence
2:00 pm	Pathfinder Showcase: Introducing the Grant-Writing Toolbox – Lee Nadler, MD
2:05 pm	SESSION IV: Tumor Microenvironment/Immunology Chair: Panagiotis Konstantinopoulos, MD, PhD
2:05 – 2:50 pm	3 oral presentations (10 mins each; 5 mins questions) David Pépin, PhD: Targeting Follistatin-like 3 to reverse immunotherapy resistance in ovarian cancer Jingxin Fu, PhD: Distinct CAF-Macrophage Crosstalk Drives the Immunosuppressive Phenotype of Invasive Lobular Carcinoma Kenichi Shimada, PhD: Spatially resolved multi-omic profiling reveals BRCA-dependent immune remodeling during PARP inhibition and PD-L1 blockade
2:50 pm	Adjourn