Keynote Speakers

The following distinguished Speakers have accepted our invitation to give a Keynote Lecture at the Congress. The list is being updated.


Filippo Acconcia
Professor
Department of Science, University Roma TRE, Rome, Italy

His research investigates the cellular and molecular principles governing estrogen receptor α (ERα) signaling. His work has elucidated how post-translational modifications (i.e., palmitoylation and phosphorylation), membrane association, and intracellular trafficking dynamically regulate ERα activity and signal integration. By linking membrane-initiated and nuclear receptor functions, his studies have contributed to a revised physiological framework of estrogen signaling. This research has advanced the understanding of how estrogen controls cell proliferation, migration, and homeostasis in hormone-responsive tissues. Recently, he has contributed in the field of estrogen-responsive breast cancer by characterizing novel natural ERα point mutations.


Carsten Carlberg
Professor
School of Medicine, Institute of Biomedicine, University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio, Finland
InLife, Institute of Animal Reproduction and Food Research, Polish Academy of Sciences, Olsztyn, Poland

Carsten Carlberg is a German biochemist, who is since more than 25 years full professor at the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio. In addition, since early 2022 Dr. Carlberg is also ERA Chair holder for Nutrigenomics in the WELCOME2 project at the Institute of Animal Reproduction and Food Research, Polish Academy of Sciences in Olsztyn, Poland.
During his time as a postdoc at the Central Research Unit of Roche in Basel (Switzerland), Dr. Carlberg was introduced to vitamin D and focused his investigations on the mechanisms of gene regulation by the micronutrient, its metabolites and synthetic analogues. Dr. Carlberg contributed with some 200 original and review articles to the field of vitamin D, in particular to the understanding of transcriptome- and epigenome-wide effects of vitamin D in human immune cells.


Harry Harvey
Doctor
Consultant Medical Oncologist, Cork University Hospital, Cork, Ireland

Dr. Harry Harvey is a Consultant Medical Oncologist at Cork University Hospital, Ireland, with an academic appointment at University College Cork. His subspecialty focuses on gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary cancers. He completed a degree in Biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin, followed by a PhD in Cancer Genetics at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, where his work on chemotherapy resistance and tumour biology helped bridge laboratory science and clinical oncology. He subsequently studied medicine at University College Cork and returned to Cork after an advanced clinical and research fellowship in gastrointestinal oncology at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, where he served as Chief Fellow in Medical Oncology. His research includes collaborative work with his father, Professor Brian J. Harvey, on sex differences and oestrogen signalling in colon cancer.


Yves Jacquot
Professor
Therapeutic Targets and Drug Design, Faculty of Pharmacy,
Paris Cité University, Paris, France

Yves Jacquot is full professor of medicinal chemistry at the Faculty of Pharmacy of Paris and pursues his research in the CNRS and INSERM. Since about 30 years, he dedicates his research work principally to estrogen-dependent diseases. His research started in 1995 in collaboration with Guy Leclercq (ULB, Brussels, Belgium), on the modulation of the estrogen receptor alpha. From 2014, he focuses his research on the control of the GPER protein, a seven-transmembrane receptor discovered in 1997 that participates in the growth of mammary adenocarcinomas including triple negative breast carcinoma. He described the independence between estrogenicity and cell proliferation and he developed the first peptidic GPER modulator. From 2012 to 2019, he collaborated with Etienne-Emile Baulieu on the modulation of the protein FKBP52, a steroid hormone receptor-interacting protein, in the context of Alzheimer’s disease. In the same context, he participated in the understanding of the phosphorylation mechanisms that are responsible for the aggregation of the protein tau. In September 2022, he organized in France the 13th International RRSH meeting, which took place at the Sorbonne, in Paris. Dr. Jacquot is membered of the Swiss Academia of Pharmaceutical Sciences.


Coralie Poulard
PhD, HDR
CRCN researcher INSERM, Cancer Research Center of Lyon, France

Dr. Coralie Poulard, PhD, HDR, is an INSERM Research Scientist at the Cancer Research Center of Lyon (CRCL), Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France. She obtained her PhD in Cancer Biology in 2013, where she investigated non-genomic estrogen receptor signaling pathways associated with poor prognosis and endocrine therapy resistance in breast cancer. She then completed a five-year postdoctoral fellowship (2013–2018) at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles in the laboratory of Prof. Michael Stallcup, where she demonstrated the therapeutic potential of targeting glucocorticoid receptor coregulator activity in B-acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Since returning to France, she has developed an independent research program within the teams of Dr. Muriel Le Romancer and Dr. Olivier Trédan at CRCL, focusing on the regulation and function of the glucocorticoid receptor in breast cancer. Her work is supported by competitive funding, including ANR grants, and has led to several high-impact publications (e.g., PNAS, EMBO Molecular Medicine, Science Advances, Nature Communications).


Cecilia Williams
Professor
Dept Protein Science, SciLifeLab, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and Dept. Medicine Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden 

Professor, Department of Protein Science, SciLifeLab and KTH Royal Institute of Technology; Department of Medicine, Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden