On October 27 and 28, an ILC Think Tank was held at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The international ILC Symposium takes place every two years, and with the next one scheduled for September 2026, the goal this year was to hold a strategic meeting to discuss progress and exchange ideas. The Think Tank was held adjacent to the NYC Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) meeting in October 2025, in recognition of BCRF’s long-term support for ILC meetings and research. The gathering was organised by Christine Desmedt (PhD), Fresia Pareja (MD, PhD), Steffi Oesterreich (PhD), Anne Vincent Salomon (MD, PhD) and Patrick Derksen (PhD). Participants included ILC professionals from the USA, Australia and Europe, among them the chairs and several members of ELBCC.

The two-day Think Tank workshop opened with a keynote by Julio Aguirre-Ghiso (PhD) on “What if cancer cells’ greatest trick is, disappearing? How to outsmart dormant cancer to prevent relapse” and continued with four in-depth sessions on ILC.

• Session 1: “ILC Dormancy: What We Know, What We Need to Know and Why It Matters”
• Session 2: “Through the Lens of E-Cadherin Loss: Cell Cycle, Survival and Tumor Microenvironment”
• Session 3: “Integrative and Multi-modal Approaches to Understanding ILC Variants and Clinical Impact”
• Session 4: “Accelerating ILC Clinical Trials Success Through Strategic Partnerships and Innovation”

The workshop led to fruitful and constructive discussions. Participants shared helpful updates on each other’s progress and ideas, including discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of potential targets or pathways for clinical trials.

As action points, it was concluded that more of these brainstorming sessions are needed, as they serve a different purpose than larger ILC meetings. There was also an idea of forming a US based ILC working group, similar to ELBCC, and establishing an international ILC Association, as a united approach, and “strength in numbers”, is crucial, particularly when working with pharmaceutical partners to obtain support for trials. An immediate need is to follow up with attendees to identify unmet yet achievable urgent needs that could be addressed by an attendee of the ILC Think Tank as a collaborative initiative.

After the ending of the EU funded Lobsterpot (CA19138), we fly into 2025 with the start of newly formed working groups. An online meeting for the ELBCC Chairs and WG leadership to formalize this start on Wednesday February 26, 2025.

The final Management Committee meeting for the COST ACTION 19138 LOBSTERPOT (21 October 2024) . An end to a very succesful start of our consortium, supported by the European Union from 2020 to 2024.

The first ever Global ILC Awareness day was held on October 15, 2024. Instigated by the LBCA, several events were organised, amongst which an afternoon Symposium in Utrecht, The Netherlands

The Organizers and Speakers of the Symposum in Utrecht from left to right: Marjolein Smidt (MUMC+), Esther Geven (PA), Patrick Derksen and Paul van Diest (UMC Utrecht), Sabine Linn (NKI-AvL), Agnes Jager (Erasmus MC), Rian Terveer (PA), Elsken van der Wall (UMC Utrecht) and Thiemo Nijnatten (MUMC+).

More info about the day can be found HERE (in Dutch).

Video registrations are available on the ELBCC Youtube Channel.