The second European interdisciplinary Ewing sarcoma research summit - A joint effort to deconstructing the multiple layers of a complex disease

Despite multimodal treatment, long term outcome for patients with Ewing sarcoma is still poor. The second "European interdisciplinary Ewing sarcoma research summit" assembled a large group of scientific experts in the field to discuss their latest unpublished findings on the way to the identification of novel therapeutic targets and strategies. Ewing sarcoma is characterized by a quiet genome with presence of an EWSR1-ETS gene rearrangement as the only and defining genetic aberration. RNA-sequencing of recently described Ewing-like sarcomas with variant translocations identified them as biologically distinct diseases. Various presentations adressed mechanisms of EWS-ETS fusion protein activities with a focus on EWS-FLI1. Data were presented shedding light on the molecular underpinnings of genetic permissiveness to this disease uncovering interaction of EWS-FLI1 with recently discovered susceptibility loci. Epigenetic context as a consequence of the interaction between the oncoprotein, cell type, developmental stage, and tissue microenvironment emerged as dominant theme in the discussion of the molecular pathogenesis and inter-and intratumor heterogeneity of Ewing sarcoma, and the difficulty to generate animal models faithfully recapitulating the human disease. The problem of preclinical development of biologically targeted therapeutics was discussed and promising perspectives were offered from the study of novel in vitro models. Finally, it was concluded that in order to facilitate rapid pre-clinical and clinical development of novel therapies in Ewing sarcoma, the community needs a platform to maintain knowledge of unpublished results, systems and models used in drug testing and to continue the open dialogue initiated at the first two Ewing sarcoma summits.

Ecole Mines ParisTech
BC Cancer Agency
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston
St Jude Childrens Res Hosp
Museum Natl Hist Nat
Van Andel Inst
Universitätsklinikum Erlangen
Center for Cancer Research
Georgetown University Medical Center
Univ Childrens Hosp Zurich
The Ohio State University
Boston Children's Hospital
The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nantes
Rizzoli Inst
Mem Sloan Kettering Canc Ctr
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
San Juan de Dios Univ Hosp
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Helen DeVos Childrens Hosp
Comprehens Canc Ctr Munich CCCM
University of Michigan
Univ Hosp Munster
Japanese Fdn Canc Res
Bellvitge Biomed Res Inst IDIBELL
Universidad de Sevilla
University of Glasgow
CeMM Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Institut Curie
St. Anna Kinderspital GmbH
Stanford University
Teknologian Tutkimuskeskus VTT
Instituto de Salud Carlos III
Universiteit Leiden
Medizinische Universität Wien - AKH
Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Krebsforschung
Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (INSERM)
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Veterinärmedizinische Universität Wien
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Virgen del Rocio University Hospital
Sant Joan de Deu Hosp
Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research
Van Andel Institute
Technische Universität München
VTT Technical Research Center Finland
Institut d'Investigacio Biomedica de Bellvitge (IDIBELL)
University Children's Hospital Zurich
St Jude Children's Research Hospital
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Georgetown University
Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN)
University of Munster
Leiden University
Ludwig Boltzmann Institute
Universite PSL
National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA
Harvard University