Team eDyNAmiC held its annual research retreat and symposium at the Fisher Conference Center at Stanford University November 18-19, 2025. 48 team members from across the US and from the UK and Germany all spent two days together on the Stanford campus; kicked off by Team Lead, Paul Mischel, the retreat featured 20+ riveting talks given by trainees from each of 16 eDyNAmiC labs.
In addition to trainee and investigator team members, we had the pleasure of two patient advocates joining us in person and two joining virtually. The patient advocates kicked off the retreat with a 30 minute presentation about the importance and value of patient advocacy and research.
Photo courtesy of Mischel lab member, Aditi Gnanasekar.
During the patient advocacy session, patient advocate Dave Chuter remarked that his role as an esophageal cancer patient and survivor who lost his brother to the same cancer three years ago is “to be an advocate for other patients, to support them, and be their voice in research and healthcare.” Andrew Lang noted, “the truth of the journey for the patient is that it’s all about discovery–a bit like science is. Ten years to say that I’m free of cancer, but I’m still living with the consequences and for a stoma user, sometimes that can be quite difficult.” Hand-in-hand, Katell Maguet emphasized that she “cannot wait until the day when we talk about ecDNA not in terms of survivorship but of quality of life because it would mean that Team eDyNAmiC cracked the code, and we are able to fight the most aggressive forms of cancer.” Geetha Arun who joined us for our Year 1 Retreat in 2022 shared with us her hope for “continued humility and passion [in the work Team eDyNAmiC does]. On behalf of all these cancer communities, I’m very grateful.”
We are ever-grateful to the patient advocates for their involvement, impact, and wisdom in shaping and guiding our research program. While Team eDyNAmiC is fundamentally a basic science program, we are deeply committed to ensuring that our work is guided by the voice of the patient, survivor, and caregiver.
We are thankful to Cancer Grand Challenges for this opportunity to study the role and impact of extrachromosomal DNA in cancer. As we enter into the last month of 2025, we are enthusiastic and excited to begin 2026 with a bang and to finish out the last six months of Year 4 with enthusiasm and momentum!
