The Landscape of Cancer Research: Advances in Immuno-Oncology 2026

Anna Olsson-Brown is a consultant in medical oncology. She specialises in the systemic treatment of skin cancers; immunotherapeutic toxicities, early phase/translational clinical trials and acute oncology. She is the clinical director for Clinical Cancer Services at Sussex Cancer Centre, honorary consultant at UCLH serving as an expert oncologist with the immunotherapy-neurotoxicity service, honorary consultant at LHCH within their cardio-oncology service and an honorary senior lecturer at the University of Liverpool. She has a background in clinical pharmacology and an interest in acute oncology and supportive care for cancer patients particularly with regards to toxicity of cancer therapies. She was an MRC research fellow completing her PhD investigating the mechanisms of immunotherapy toxicity and has subsequently published extensively in the area.

Mark Bertagnolli is the Chief Operating Officer of ViroMissile and serves on its board of directors, having served previously as the Company’s Chief Business Officer. Before ViroMissile, Mark was founder of Amitech Therapeutic Solutions, a small molecule biotechnology company, after serving as Genelux Corporation’s Chief Business Officer, where he worked with ViroMissile’s founder, Dr. Nanhai George Chen. Prior to Genelux, Mark worked on the buy-side of Wall Street, where he founded the global technology hedge fund at FrontPoint Partners, a Morgan Stanley company, and prior to that Mark was a partner at Andor Capital Management, a fund that split from Pequot Capital Management, where Mark joined in 2000 following a year on the sell-side at Salomon Smith Barney. Prior to his time in the investment community, Mark worked at both Texas Instruments and Philips Semiconductor. Mark served for 5 years as a nuclear submarine officer in the US Navy, earning the designation Nuclear Engineer by the Naval Reactors division of the DOE. Mark earned a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering, cum laude, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a Certified Director by NACD.

Nicholas Putnam is a Scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific leading the development of analytical solutions for cell and gene therapy, with a focus on advancing automation instrumentation to streamline process development and manufacturing of cell therapy drug products. With a strong foundation in both the technical and strategic aspects of cell therapy manufacturing, Nicholas designs and implements tools to support CAR T cell product characterization, quality control, and workflow optimization. He holds both a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Biology, with an emphasis in Cell and Molecular Biology, from California State University, Fresno.

Dr. Yan Leyfman is a rising star in oncology and AI, recently recognized as a 40 Under 40 Emerging Leader in Cancer at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he led the Immunology Division of the Global COVID-19 Taskforce, pioneering the first mechanisms for SARS-CoV-2 and COVI-Flu. His groundbreaking research on the cancer-COVID-19 interplay, presented at ASCO 2021 and published in BMC Journal of Hematology & Oncology, has significant clinical implications, earning him recognition as a 2022 International Hero in Healthcare by the Lymphoma, Leukemia & Myeloma Congress. Dr. Leyfman has made key contributions to advancing CAR T cell therapies, currently in clinical trials, earning honors such as the 2020 iCHEM Emerging International Scholar Award and the 2023 Young Scientists Phacilitate Advanced Therapies Award. Passionate about education and mentorship, he serves as a journal editor, mentors medical students in developing countries, and speaks on medical innovations. As co-founder and Executive Director of MedNews Week, he combats medical misinformation and expands global medical education, particularly in underserved regions. His impact has been recognized with the 2023 & 2026 ASCO Breakthrough Conquer Cancer Merit Award, 2024 Global Hero in Healthcare and 2025 CSNY Higher Education Trailblazer, with his work published in ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology Global Oncology, Cell's Innovation Medicine, and ASH’s Hematopoesis. Most recently, Dr. Leyfman collaborated with Mount Sinai and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to develop an AI platform predicting patient responses to checkpoint inhibitors using basic clinical data, published in Nature Medicine.

Dr. Ofer Sharon is a physician and entrepreneur with over two decades of experience in clinical research, pharmaceuticals, and biotechnology. Prior to joining OncoHost, Sharon held senior positions in global pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca and MSD (Merck), and was part of the development and clinical launch team for Keytruda. In addition, Sharon has been involved in the establishment of several healthcare companies focused on bioinformatics and machine learning (ML) platforms for clinical deterioration detection and early intervention.

Aadel Chaudhuri, MD, PhD, began his scientific training at MIT in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Phillip Sharp and continued at Caltech with Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, where he led foundational studies on microRNAs in cancer and immunity. During residency and postdoctoral training at Stanford under the mentorship of Maximilian Diehn MD PhD, he led a seminal Cancer Discovery study introducing the concept of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) minimal residual disease (MRD). This work demonstrated that ctDNA can detect residual disease months before radiographic progression and helped establish the foundation for ctDNA-guided molecular response assessment, now widely incorporated into clinical trials and commercial diagnostic platforms. Dr. Chaudhuri now leads the Liquid Biopsy and Translational Immunogenomics Laboratory at Mayo Clinic. His group develops and clinically translates integrative liquid biopsy strategies, leveraging genomic, epigenomic, fragmentomic, and immune repertoire profiling of human biofluids to enable early cancer detection, dynamic treatment monitoring, and prediction of therapeutic response and resistance. His work has advanced ctDNA MRD detection using plasma, urine, and lymph-derived biofluids, as well as noninvasive profiling of tumor–immune dynamics from circulation. His research program is supported by five NIH R01-equivalent awards. He serves as Professor and Vice Chair for Translational Research in Radiation Oncology and as Enterprise Co-Director of Mayo Clinic’s Cancer Precision Medicine Office. Deeply committed to mentorship and the development of physician-scientists, Dr. Chaudhuri trains residents, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and medical students and serves on Mayo Clinic’s MD/PhD admissions committee.