Long Night of Research 2026 🔬Join us on April 24 to explore childhood cancer research up close and discover how we detect cancer, understand it better and develop more targeted treatments. Enjoy interactive stations, talks & insights!

🗣️Last week, we had the pleasure of hosting the AGPHO (AG Pädiatrische Hämato-Onkologie) Spring Meeting 2026! Over two days, clinicians, researchers and experts from across Austria came together to exchange knowledge in pediatric hematology and oncology.

📢 New paper alert! A research team led by Florian Halbritter and @dseruggia.bsky.social developed a new method that helps scientists craft more accurate cellular models from stem cells. More: ccri.at/guiding-stem...

Happy to share our paper in collaboration with cancerbits.bsky.social. We used machine learning & ATAC-seq to refine erythroid differentiation protocols. Recipes for lineage differentiation are written on chromatin! @stanna-ccri.bsky.social @cemm.oeaw.ac.at

🧪Explore. Discover. Experiment. With „St. Anna Research Kids“, Katharina Wiener & Magdalena Radoš bring hands-on science to children with cancer, creating moments of curiosity and lightness. #InternationalChildhoodCancerDay2026 ccri.at/st-anna-rese...

🎗️#InternationalChildhoodCancerDay! Every year, around 400,000 children worldwide are diagnosed with cancer. Progress is possible: through research, international collaboration and close cooperation between science and clinical care. Read more:🔗 ccri.at/internationa...

👩‍🔬From childhood curiosity to shaping the future: On today's International Day of Women and Girls in Science, our female scientists talk about where their journey began, what drives them today and what they hope for tomorrow. #WomenInScienceDay💛 ccri.at/women-in-sci...

🎓 Insights into career paths in research! 🔬 St. Anna CCRI Technical Assistant Laura Guiollot returned to the Lycée Français de Vienne to inspire students and share her journey into science. The strong engagement and enthusiastic feedback highlighted the power of face-to-face exchange.

🗣️Bridging developmental biology and childhood cancer research: The St. Anna CCRI Symposium 2026 brought together researchers to discuss cell fate in cancer and development and spark new collaborations. 🔬Together, we advance pediatric cancer research. www.youtube.com/watch?v=szcT...

🔬 floriangrebien.bsky.social explains how a key regulator can be used to trigger the degradation of the NUP98 fusion oncoprotein in aggressive pediatric AML! 👉 Read more on our website: ccri.at/stop-through-spop-strategy-against-aggressive-blood-cancer/

🌍 70+Scientists, 28 Labs, 8 Countries: Two days of collaboration at the 2nd International Workshop on Innovative Models for Neuroblastoma Research at St. Anna CCRI! Multiple sessions, flash talks and breakout groups drove open exchange and new ideas for neuroblastoma research @cancerbits.bsky.social

How can Europe turn rare disease challenges into coordinated solutions? At the European Health Summit, Prof. Ruth Ladenstein highlighted how cross-border collaboration can improve diagnosis, research and access to care for children with rare diseases like childhood cancer. vimeo.com/1142443149?s...

🧬 New strategy to fight #AML: A study led by @floriangrebien.bsky.social & team at Vetmeduni, @stanna-ccri.bsky.social & CeMM identified the protein SPOP as a direct regulator of the stability of NUP98 fusion oncoproteins, a potential target for new therapies. ➡️ bit.ly/3M2RfWz 📄 bit.ly/4omtZ3x

Great discussions with the LCH community at this year’s ECHO Meeting in Florence! 🌟 With presentations on high-risk LCH trial design, iPSC models, and preliminary LCH-IV results, our team was glad to be part of this scientific exchange.

Members of the Seruggia and Tomazou groups attended “When Development Meets Cancer” at IRB Barcelona this week! 👏 Talks by Hannah Beneder & Ornella Urzì, posters by Tamina Stelzer, Manon Ressaire & Hana Bernhardova, a fantastic representation from both teams!

Congrats to Sara Wernig-Zorc for completing the Clinical Trials program at Harvard Medical School, with distinction! 🎓👏 Her capstone on biomarker-driven immunotherapy in neuroblastoma was recognized for excellence. #ClinicalResearch #HarvardMed #Neuroblastoma ©Liesl Clark

We are proud to see Peter Peneder, formerly with the Tomazou group, contributing to such an impressive project!

Ruth Ladenstein on stage for ERN PaedCan at today’s EUnetCCC Annual Meeting: discussing sustainability and shared solutions across EU health networks, with a dedicated ERN PaedCan booth on site. 🇪🇺 #EUnetCCC #ERNPaedCan #EUHealth

St. Anna CCRI is pleased to announce the appointment of Eleni Tomazou and Sabine Taschner-Mandl, two internationally recognized experts, as new Scientific Directors. 🔗Read more: lnkd.in/gKF_cJFM

Great to have Peter Kharchenko (ISTA and MedUni Vienna) with us for a guest lecture on using scRNA-seq data to study CNAs in cancer and normal tissues — highlighting how computational analysis helps decode tumor heterogeneity and disease mechanisms.

🧬A new Science Immunology study by CeMM, @stanna-ccri.bsky.social, @meduniwien.ac.at, @medunigraz.at & @unibonn.bsky.social uncovers a surprising link between lipid biology & immune defense, with insights for rare immune disorders & cancer immunotherapy. ➡️ tinyurl.com/2ant228p 📄 tinyurl.com/yrbzt7st

❓Why does a fusion oncogene cause Ewing sarcoma only in certain cells? Hana Bernhardova from the Tomazou Lab at St. Anna CCRI, who recently received the BIF PhD Fellowship, is building a new model from pluripotent stem cells. Details: 🔗 ccri.at/bif-fellowsh...

✨ Guest lectures are an important part of how we foster scientific exchange at St. Anna CCRI. This week we had the pleasure of hosting Jose Tubio (CiMUS, Spain), who spoke on the impact of mobile DNA in human cancer and disease. @mobilegenomes.bsky.social @cimususc.bsky.social

We were invited to TedAI in the Hofburg, Vienna to show how AI is supporting childhood cancer research.🔬 Peter Zöscher presented how the AI tool developed by Simon Gutwein (Taschner-Mandl group) flags suspicious cells & speeds up diagnostics.

Thank you to Jan Škoda (@skodalab.bsky.social from Masaryk Univ & ICRC Brno) for an inspiring guest lecture on repurposing drugs for mitochondria-targeted therapies in MYC-driven pediatric tumors, highlighting new strategies to overcome therapy resistance in cancers such as high-risk neuroblastoma.

👏 We are proud to see Kaan Boztug, PI at St. Anna CCRI, and Irinka Castanon, senior researcher in the Boztug Group, at the forefront of this new review in Nature Reviews Immunology.

How can therapy resistance in childhood AML be detected already at diagnosis❓ 👉Researchers from St. Anna CCRI, @cemm.oeaw.ac.at , @meduniwien.ac.at and St. Anna Kinderspital developed a new method combining imaging, molecular profiling & AI. 🔗 More info: tinyurl.com/dkc68nj6

Wrapping up a successful SIOPEN AGM Meeting! 4 presentations, 1 award (congrats Sören Strohmenger 🎉) and a dedicated MONALISA meeting: ✅Liquid biopsy tests ready in 7 reference labs across Europe (incl. accredited tests at Labdia) ✅ clinical trial set to open by end of 2025

How can genomic discoveries improve diagnostics for children with cancer? 🌟This week, Lennart Kester (@themaximacenter.bsky.social ) gave a guest lecture at St. Anna CCRI to share how research can be translated into clinical practice.

🎓💛St. Anna CCRI is opening its doors to young people who want to explore career opportunities in pediatric cancer research. Whether you are a Bioinformatician, a Master’s, or PhD student, a Technical Assistant, or a Biomedical Analyst – this event is for you. Register now >>> ccri.at/careers/

Clarity in science matters! 🧬🎨 After last year’s success, we once again hosted the workshop on “Applying Design Principles to Schematic Figures” where design expert Sandra Krahl taught our researchers how to turn complex concepts into compelling visual stories.

Four St. Anna CCRI scientists were honored by the Austrian Society of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine (ÖGKJ) for outstanding publications – a special honor to receive during #ChildhoodCancerAwarenessMonth 💛 Congrats to Leo Kager, Kaan Boztug, Chantal Lucini & Florian Halbritter!

Join us at the St. Anna CCRI Symposium on Cell Fate in Cancer and Development and meet with top experts! Register now >>> ccri.at/st-anna-ccri-symposium-2026 🗓 January 23, 2026 14:00-18:00 📍 Van Swieten Saal, Medical University of Vienna

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.🎗️ Fittingly, the EU Commission/HaDEA highlights our MONALISA project, aiming to improve care for children with relapsed neuroblastoma, with insights from co-scientific project leader Sabine Taschner-Mandl. 🔗 hadea.ec.europa.eu/news/monalis...

Conventional methods miss ~ 60% of cases with minimal residual disease in high-risk neuroblastoma patients. A new study by Sabine Taschner-Mandl (St. Anna CCRI), Labdia and the Princess Máxima Center shows that combining three analysis methods detects these hidden tumor cells far more sensitively.

🎉 Congratulations to Mohamed Shoeb on successfully defending his PhD! Just days after the publication of his latest paper on pediatric AML, Mohamed reached another major milestone. A proud moment for the Halbritter Group (ccri.at/research-gro...) and all collaborators!

🔬 New in Communications Biology: Researchers from St. Anna CCRI & @meduniwien.ac.at developed a stem cell model to study an aggressive pediatric AML subtype (CBFA2T3::GLIS2). Findings reveal 2 ways the oncogene disrupts blood formation: 📄 www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Jana Block received the ÖGAI – Fritz & Ursula Melchers Dissertation Prize for her PhD Thesis conducted in the research group of @boztugk.bsky.social at St. Anna CCRI. Her work uncovered germline DOCK11 loss-of-function mutations as the cause of a novel immune dysregulation disorder.

Our paper on high-content drug screening for #PrecisionMedicine in pediatric AML is out! tinyurl.com/5dbjr7py I'm extremely grateful to all our co-authors and collaborators! Special thanks also to the institutions @cemm.oeaw.ac.at @stanna-ccri.bsky.social @meduniwien.ac.at @fwf-at.bsky.social

🎉 Congratulations to Hana Bernhardova on receiving a prestigious PhD Fellowship from Böringer Ingelheim Fonds! Her project models Ewing sarcoma from precancerous stages to metastasis, revealing how fusion oncogenes drive cancer in specific cell contexts.

I am pleased to share a new preprint from my postdoc in the @dseruggia.bsky.social lab. We discovered a structural dependency within the CORE module of the transcriptional coactivator SAGA, which regulates the stability of its histone acetyl transferase, KAT2A. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... 1/n

Sara Wernig-Zorc from the Taschner-Mandl Lab received the prize for the best oral presentation in the basic science category at ANR 2025! 🎉There she gave insights into how therapy-resistant neuroblastoma cells adapt and survive in the bone marrow. Congratulations!

🧬 Proud of our team's contribution at the SIOP-RTSG annual meeting in Liverpool! Our researchers presented cutting-edge work on Wilms tumor research - from single-cell biomarker discovery to β-catenin investigations. Great to see our science making an impact in the pediatric oncology community.

💡 Austria’s National Mirror Group under ERDERA, initiated by Prof. Kaan Boztug (St. Anna CCRI), met to define a 3-year roadmap for #RareDisease research, uniting science, care & policy across sectors. @boztugk.bsky.social @erdera.bsky.social 🔗 More information: www.erdera.org

🔬Pleased to have contributed to this study led by the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, now in Nature. The Grebien Lab (@floriangrebien.bsky.social) at St. Anna CCRI participated in uncovering how the microenvironment of nuclear condensates influences cellular function. shorturl.at/CYJOR

We’re having an amazing time connecting with talented students and young professionals at the Life Sciences Career Fair! 💬🧬 Come and visit our booth — learn about careers in pediatric cancer research and take your next career step! #LifeSciencesFair

✨ Great moments at #SIOPEurope2025 in Budapest! Fantastic to meet #EUMONALISA partners in person & share updates. Special highlight: Sabine Taschner-Mandl’s spotlight talk on liquid biopsy progress in #ChildhoodCancer. Thanks SIOPEurope! 👏 #MissionCancer #HorizonEU

💡Research team finds CDK12 is a key vulnerability in AML with NUP98 fusions. New hope for targeted therapies in resistant childhood leukemia. Study by Vetmeduni, St. Anna CCRI @floriangrebien.bsky.social & @cemm-vienna.bsky.social in Nature Communications >>> www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎤At Pint of Science Austria, Marie Bernkopf (St. Anna CCRI) explained how liquid biopsy – based on a simple blood draw – helps monitor childhood neuroblastoma more gently and effectively, resulting in earlier relapse detection and less burden for kids! #PintofScience #EUMONALISA 📷: Marie Ebeyer

🔬Curious about a career in pediatric cancer research? Meet St. Anna CCRI at the Life Sciences Career Fair on May 27, 2025 at FH Campus Wien! 📚Learn about our research programs and career opportunities. #LifeScienceCareerFair25 oegmbt.at/events/life-...