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OxCODE researchers at the Early Detection of Cancer Conference 2021

Oxford’s early detection research was featured at this annual event.

The annual Early Detection of Cancer Conference is organised by Cancer Research UK, OHSU Knight Cancer Institute and the Canary Center at Stanford to bring together experts in early detection from multiple disciplines to share ground-breaking research and progress in the field.

This year, Oxford researchers participated in the virtual conference that ran from 6-8th October. The conference included sessions on When and where detection matters: ‘The Tipping Point’; How to detect: emerging technologies for understanding signals over time; Early detection in the real world; Models and systems to inform detection; and What do we do once we detect early?

 

 

As an early career researcher in the early detection of cancer, I found it really interesting to hear talks on subjects outside my immediate scientific discipline. Attending this conference has broadened my knowledge of the field as a whole and provided a greater context for my research. I am looking forward to the next event and hearing updates on how AI is helping in the field of early detection of cancer. - Dr Sharib Ali, Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Featuring OxCODE research

Four OxCODE researchers presented at the meeting:

  • Professor Xin Lu, OxCODE Director took part in a “Great Debate” arguing against the proposal that “It’s time to give up on human hypothesis-driven research; massive multimodal data mined by AI is the only way we’ll truly unravel the complexity of cancer early detection”
  • Professor Stephen Friend (Department of Psychiatry) presented a talk on “How might semi-ubiquitous smartphones and wearables help triage the more specific yet expensive current tools for early cancer detection?”
  • Dr Sharib Ali (Institute of Biomedical Engineering) presented a poster entitled “Real-time 3D quantification system for risk stratification and therapy monitoring in Barrett’s Oesophagus”
  • Dr James Larkin (Department of Oncology) presented a poster including his OxCODE-supported work on “Metabolomics identifies cancers in a mixed population of patients with non-specific symptoms”.

 

For me, the best elements of the conference were the debates. In particular, I enjoyed the discussions for and against blood being the only important detection medium given my interest in blood-based diagnostics. I was pleased so see the great deal of interest in early diagnosis and blood-based techniques as one of the possible means to achieve this in the future. - Dr James Larkin, Department of Oncology

The next conference is planned as an in-person event in Portland, Oregon, USA on 18-20th October 2022.