Agenda

Tuesday, April 14, 2026

09:00 am EST
Welcome & Introductions

Sandra Wolin, M.D., Ph.D.
Center for Cancer Research, NCI

Session I:  miRNAs in Cancer 
                   Chair: Natasha Caplen, Ph.D., Center for Cancer Research, NCI

09:15 am EST
A Tale of Two Alleles: DICER1 and Tumori

Douglas Stewart, M.D., Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics, NCI  

09:45 am EST
From Mutation to Mechanism: Functional Consequences of Pathogenic DICER1 Variants

Shuo Gu, Ph.D., Center for Cancer Research, NCI 

10:15 am EST
Towards Non-Coding RNA Medicine in Cancer

Frank Slack, Ph.D., Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Cent

10:45 am EST
Break

Session II:  RNA Metabolism in Cancer
                    Chair: Rouf Banday, Ph.D., Center for Cancer Research, NC

11:00 am EST
Targeting RNA Splicing Regulatory Networks in Cancer and Aging

Olga Anczukȯw, Ph.D.
The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine

11:30 am EST
Targeting a Pathogenic Cryptic Exon That Drives HLRCC to Induce Exon Skipping

Mariana Mandler Chou, Ph.D., Center for Cancer Research, NCI 

11:45 am EST
Elucidating the Regulatory Role of N1-methyl Adenosine Modification on Transfer-RNA Activity and Cellular Translation in Glioblastoma

Nhi Nguyen, The University of Alabama at Birmingham 

12:00 pm EST
Lunch and Poster Session

Session III:  RNA Therapeutics & Cancer 
                     Chair: Pedro Batista, Ph.D., Center for Cancer Research, NCI 

01:30 pm EST
Cold Yet Vaccinable? Vaccines for Pancreatic Cancer

Vinod Balachandran, M.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center 

02:00 pm EST
Transcriptome-wide Mapping Reveals Widespread RNA Off-targeting by Cisplatin and Reveals a Non-canonical Mechanism with Prognostic Potential

Sreejith Nair, Ph.D., Georgetown University 

02:15 pm EST
Targeting lncRNA with Small Molecules to Investigate Chromosome Instability in Cancer

Annie Gilbert, Ph.D., Center for Cancer Research, NCI 

02:30 pm EST
Break

Session IV: Non-Coding RNAs in Cancer 
                     Chair: Colin Wu, Ph.D., Center for Cancer Research, NCI 

02:45 pm EST
Dose-Dependent Control of Cancer Pathways by Long Noncoding RNAs

Nadya Dimitrova, Ph.D., Yale University 

03:15 pm EST
Regulation of Codon Dependent Translation of MHC-I and Immunity by Dietary Amino Acid Modulation

Sohail Tavazoie, M.D., Ph.D., Rockefeller University 

03:45 pm EST
Wrap-up and Adjourn