Join us this November for the Cancer Research UK Lung Cancer Centre of Excellence Conference. We’re bringing together an exceptional line-up of leading scientists and clinicians highlighting the most recent advances in lung cancer.

Themes include:

Lung Cancer Origins
SCLC Biology
Lung Cancer Immunotherapy
Optimising Radiotherapy
Lung Cancer & the Nervous System

Designed to foster meaningful discussion, expect thought-provoking talks, vibrant poster sessions and a buzzing atmosphere designed to spark collaboration and new ideas.

4th – 6th November 2026

The Midland Hotel
16 Peter St, Manchester M60 2DS

Conference Fees

Student £200
PhD students and Clinical Fellows

Postdoctoral Scientist, Bioinformatician,
Doctors in Training,
Junior Scientists/Research Staff £300

Senior Scientist, Clinicians,
PI, Group Leaders £350

Industry £750

Abstract Deadline:

5th September

Registration Deadline:

10th October

Register via this link

Conference Programme

Wednesday 4th November

11:30	Registration & lunch
13:00	Welcome by Caroline Dive and Charles Swanton
13:15 – 14:15	Keynote: Mihaela van der Schaar \| University of Cambridge Title TBC
14:15 – 16:15	Session 1: Lung Cancer Molecular Prevention and Interception
14:15	Sarah Blagden \| University of Oxford Learning from LungVax
14:40	William Hill \| CRUK Manchester Institute, University of Manchester Understanding Tumour Promotion by Air Pollutants
15:05	Proffered Paper \| Moritz Jacob Przybilla \| Somatic Genomics Programme, Wellcome Sanger Institute Clonal competition determines the reversibility of lung cancer risk — and opens a route to interception
15:20	James Reading \| UCL Cancer Institute Targeting Preinvasive T Cell Dysregulation for Lung Cancer Interception
15:45	Tej Pandya \| University College London Can we prevent lung cancer?
16:15	Break
16:30 – 18:30	Session 2: Optimising Radiotherapy
16:30	Corinne Faivre-Finn \| Christie NHS Foundation Trust/University of Manchester Beyond Conventional Trial Design: Novel Methodologies to optimise Radiotherapy
16:55	Philippe Lambin \| Maastricht University News from Maastricht in NSCLC: Results of a Randomized Phase II Immunocytokine Trials and the Emergence of Foundation Models
17:20	Crispin Hiley \| University College London Hospitals Proton therapy in thoracic cancer: clinical promise and translational opportunities
17:45	Flash Talks Michelle Leung \| UCL Cancer Institute; Francis Crick Institute \| Alternative splicing is a major determinant of transcriptomic intratumour heterogeneity in non-small cell lung cancer Steven Hill \| Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre \| Determination of small cell lung cancer subtype heterogeneity in cell-free DNA Abigail Y L Shurr \| UCL Cancer Institute \| Targeting preinvasive T cell regulation to intercept lung cancer Lucia A. Torres Fernández \| University of Cologne \| A targetable dependency on nonsense-mediated decay for cellular homeostasis and immune control in small cell lung cancer Ellen Appleton \| Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre \| Peripheral T cell dynamics and response to immunotherapy in patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC).
18:30 – 19:30	Early Career Researchers Session: Meet the speakers

Thursday 5th November

08:30 – 09:00	Arrival Refreshments
09:00 – 10:30	Session 3: Lung Cancer Origins
09:00	Humam Kadara \| MD Anderson Decoding the origins of lung cancer: what the cell is going on?
09:25	Tuomas Tammela \| Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Epithelial injury programs in tumorigenesis and malignant plasticity.
09:50	Proffered Paper \| Erik Caeiro Cardoso \| University of Cambridge and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Early fibrotic niches establish tumour-permissive microenvironments
10:05	Herbert Schiller \| Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich From Transitional States to Tissue Landscapes in Health and Disease
10:30	Break
10:45	Sponsor Talk: Ultima Genomics
11:00 – 12:00	Flash Talks Mina Karimpour \| CRUK National Biomarker Centre \| A computational framework for characterising small cell lung cancer circulating tumour cells from sparse single-cell DNA methylomes Gerry Kwok \| The Francis Crick Institute \| Longitudinal DNA methylation profiling reveals clonal conservation and epigenetic plasticity during metastatic lung cancer evolution Victoria Fife \| Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre \| A cyclooxygenase-2 associated pro-tumorigenic inflammatory signature predicts outcome after surgery in lung cancer Thomas Jones \| University College London \| Genomic–Transcriptomic Evolution in Lung Cancer and Metastasis Benjamin B. Morris \| UT MD Anderson Cancer Center \| Tracking small-cell lung cancer evolution under treatment using deep whole-genome sequencing of circulating tumor DNA Simon Hood \| Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre \| Assessing the peripheral blood T cell repertoire in patients with small cell lung cancer undergoing standard-of-care treatment for predictive biomarker discovery.
12:00 – 13:00	Lunch
13:00 – 15:00	Session 4: Lung Cancer Immunology
13:00	Luis Paz-Ares \| National Oncology Research Center/Universidad Complutense de Madrid Enhancing Immunology Therapy in SCLC
13:25	Christine Lovly \| City of Hope Cancer Centre TBC
13:50	Proffered Paper \| Faiz Jabbar \| The Francis Crick Institute and King’s College Hospital Smoking status modulates therapy-driven selection for immune-evasive mutations in normal lung
14:05	Daniel Murphy \| Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute Investigating tumour:immune dynamics in autochthonous mouse models of lung cancer
14:30	Santiago Zelenay \| CRUK Manchester Institute, University of Manchester A COX-2-associated inflammatory signature predicts recurrence after lung cancer surgery
15:00	Break
15:30 – 18:00	Session 5: Screening for Early Disease & Detection
15:30	Phil Crosbie \| University of Manchester Lung cancer screening in the UK – an update
15:55	Robert Rintoul \| University of Cambridge The emerging issue of Second Primary Lung Cancer – the SPORT study
16:20	Patient Talk
16:45	Proffered Paper \| Willie Wu\| University of British Columbia and IRIS: A Lightweight Visual Analytics Platform Reveals Prognostic Spatial Architectures in Early-Stage Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer
17:00	Daniel Muñoz-Espín \| University of Cambridge Ageing drives an immunosuppressive, senescent microenvironment promoting lung carcinogenesis.
17:25	Sam Janes \| University College London Hospitals The first steps to Squamous Cell Carcinoma
18:00 – 19:30	Poster Session
20:00	Conference Dinner

Friday 6th November

08:30	Tea & Coffee
09:00 – 11:00	Session 6: Lung Cancer Biological Heterogeneity
09:00	Leanne Li \| The Francis Crick Institute Lung cancer and the nervous system
10:25	Thales Papagiannakopoulos \| NYU Langone Health Metabolic Mechanisms of Lung Cancer Progression
09:50	Proffered Paper \| Joshua Searle \| University College London Compound and pooled CRISPR-KO screens converge on therapeutic vulnerabilities in pleural mesothelioma
10:05	Ramaswamy Govindan \| Washington University School of Medicine Proteogenomics of Lung Cancer: Bench to Bedside
10:30	Julien Sage \| Stanford University Intra-tumoral heterogeneity in small-cell lung cancer development and response to therapy
11:00 – 12:00	Keynote: Charles Rudin \| Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Insights and Opportunities in Small Cell Lung Cancer
12:00 – 13:00	Lunch
13:00 – 15:00	Session 7: Small Cell Lung Cancer Biology
13:00	Trudy Oliver \| Duke School of Medicine Basal Origin and Lineage Trajectories of Small Cell Lung Cancer
13:25	Matthew G. Oser \| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School Lineage States as Therapeutic Vulnerabilities and Drivers of Therapeutic Resistance in Lung Cancer
13:50	Proffered Paper \| Laura C. Kaiser \| University of Cologne Tracking the evolutionary dynamics and transcriptional adaptations under chemotherapy in small cell lung cancer
14:05	Silvia von Karstedt \| University of Cologne Mechanisms of tumour cell plasticity during small cell lung cancer evolution
14:30	Kathryn Simpson \| CRUK Manchester Institute, University of Manchester Liver Metastasis in Small Cell Lung Cancer – one cell at a time
15:00	Closing Remarks and Awards
15:20	Conference End