June 17 saw more than 400 scientists, clinicians, research staff, and other Children’s Hospital Los Angeles team members come together for The Saban Research Institute’s (TSRI) yearly symposium and poster session—Science Day 2026.

The event gave attendees the opportunity to hear from experts from CHLA and beyond, highlighting the importance of innovative pediatric research that turns knowledge acquired through scientific investigation into new and improved treatments for children all over the world.

This year, TSRI Science Day centered on advances in understanding cancer biology. Basic and clinical research, especially in the past 20 years, has introduced new knowledge and treatment strategies leading to monumental improvements in survival rates for nearly all pediatric cancers. The experts at TSRI Science Day discussed efforts to make more accurate cancer diagnoses, create individualized treatment approaches for specific patients, leverage new technologies to optimize the speed and productivity of research, and maximize long term quality of life for individuals who survive childhood cancer.

“Hope, particularly for devastating diseases like cancer, rests with those in this room and across our organization, working tirelessly to transform research discoveries into healthier futures for children,” said Paul Viviano, President and Chief Executive Officer at CHLA, during the Opening Remarks preceding the day’s events.

Alan S. Wayne, MD, Pediatrician-in-Chief and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at CHLA, then spoke about the history of cancer research at the hospital. “The beginning of cancer investigations at CHLA date back to the founding of the Division of Hematology-Oncology in the 1950s by Dr. Denny Hammond,” Dr. Wayne said. “He helped establish the first pediatric oncology clinical trial group that evolved into the current Children’s Oncology Group, demonstrating the critical importance of collaborative, multi-institutional clinical trials to improve pediatric cancer outcomes.”

An individual with a light skin tone stands at a podium with the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles logo and speaks to an auditorium full of people.
Pat Levitt, PhD, delivers opening remarks during TSRI Science Day 2026.

TSRI Science Day brought together individuals from across CHLA’s various departments, highlighting not only the work of researchers, but also the clinical excellence and training programs needed to translate science into effective care strategies.

Pat Levitt, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of TSRI, emphasized the importance of each of these areas of CHLA:“Clinical care, research discoveries, and training and education—these are the hallmarks of a great academic medical center,” Dr. Levitt said. “Individually, they have strength, but together, they really make a difference.”

Key takeaways from the advances in cancer biology symposium

The symposium included presentations from four scientific experts—one from CHLA, and three from other medical and research institutions across the United States.

  • Models to Mechanisms: Leveraging Comparative Oncology to Identify Conserved Targets in Fusion-Driven Sarcoma – Genevieve C. Kendall, PhD, from Nationwide Children’s Hospital
    • Dr. Kendall previously worked with James Amatruda, MD, PhD, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Director of the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute at CHLA. She spoke about the value of using models incorporating zebrafish, which share the majority of their genes with humans, to explore sarcomas, or cancers that develop in the body’s bones, fat, muscles, nerves, and cartilage. Dr. Kendall is using zebrafish models to investigate fusion oncogenes, which form when previously independent genes merge due to chromosomal rearrangements that drive uncontrolled cell growth, leading to different cancers such as sarcomas. Her work aims to support the creation of the first therapies to target the fusion between such genes, halting cancer development.
  • Oncohistones and Selective Cell State Regulation in Diffuse Glioma – Suzanne J. Baker, PhD, from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

    • Dr. Baker is researching diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas, which are aggressive cancerous tumors in the brainstem that mainly affect children. Since they are so integrated throughout the brainstem, these tumors cannot be surgically removed. However, Dr. Baker has made progress in understanding the underlying genetics that causes these tumors, which could lead to future treatments that target cancer cells and do not impact healthy brain tissue.

      An auditorium full of seated people with a variety of skin tones.
      Attendees listen to symposium presentations during TSRI Science Day 2026.
  • Agentic AI for Accelerating Biomedical Discoveries – James Zou, PhD, from Stanford University
    • Dr. Zou’s presentation focused on using artificial intelligence (AI) to potentially transform and accelerate research processes, such as those needed to identify suitable targets for cancer-eliminating drugs. He and his team have developed a “virtual lab” and a larger “virtual biotech” made up of AI agents that function as “co-scientists” to come up with research plans and run virtual experiments. Each of these AI agents are trained by reading a variety of published research papers in specific fields, enabling each of them to fill a particular role on a research team: there are AI immunologists, AI oncologists, AI scientific critics, and more. Human scientists can submit a particular research question, and together, these AI agents can run virtual meetings, develop a proposed workflow for an experiment, run the experiment, and pull from their respective knowledge bases to come up with solutions to the question. Human researchers can then validate these solutions in the lab. Dr. Zou anticipates that this AI model could help to accelerate research, though he noted that while the AI agents perform well within the patterns of their training data, they do not yet exhibit the same capacity as humans to generate truly novel, outside-the-box ideas.
  • With Obligation Comes Opportunity: The Case for Outcomes Research Using Pediatric Oncology as a Paradigm – David Freyer, DO, MS, from CHLA
    • Dr. Freyer spoke about one of his areas of expertise—outcomes research, or the scientific effort to maximize quality of life and address late effects for individuals who have survived childhood cancer. He pointed out that the 5-year survival rate for pediatric cancer is now 85.6%, meaning that most children who survive cancer have years or even decades of life ahead of them. But a sometimes-overlooked issue is that a cancer diagnosis could affect many body systems; In addition to the region with cancer, other parts of the body can be damaged through side effects of the chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or surgeries required to treat them, not to mention the psychological and financial impacts on families dealing with cancer. Dr. Freyer focuses on these long-term issues through his work as director of CHLA’s Survivorship and Supportive Care Program. This research has helped to impact clinical practice guidelines and public policy measures related to cancer.

The largest poster session in CHLA’s history

After the symposium, attendees headed outdoors to the Anita S. Watson Courtyard, where research faculty, trainees, and fellows working in clinical research, basic science, medical education research, quality improvement research, and medical education research presented 134 scientific posters displaying their recent projects—more posters than at any previous TSRI Science Day.

After the poster session, 10 finalists for the best poster awards delivered short presentations on their work during the aptly named Data Blitz segment of TSRI Science Day. The judges then announced the three finalists who won awards.

Poster session and Data Blitz award winners:

Striking scientific visuals

The final portion of TSRI Science Day 2026 highlighted visual representations of scientific concepts. CHLA’s second annual BioRender graphical abstract contest gathered visual depictions of research projects created and submitted by participants using the scientific visualization digital tool BioRender. The contest was judged by both BioRender representatives and TSRI Science Day attendees.

Graphical abstract contest winners:

A scientific graphical abstract shows research involving neurons.
A scientific graphical abstract shows research involving microplastics and kidneys.

The winners of the ever-popular Cellular Imaging Core annual image contest were also announced.

Cellular Imaging Core contest winners:

  • 1st Place: Leila Bahmani, PhD (Mentor: Aaron Nagiel, MD, PhD)
  • 2nd Place: Olivia Sosnowski, PhD (Mentor: Mark Frey, PhD)

  • 3rd Place: Liana Hayrapetyan, MD, PhD (Mentor: Pat Levitt, PhD)

    A fluorescent image of a human retinal organoid made up of concentric circles of colored shapes.
    Winning image from Leila Bahmani, PhD: Confocal microscopy on Cellular Imaging Core Leica STELLARIS 5. Layers of color and light map the self-assembly of a human retinal organoid, where diverse cell types organize into the intricate architecture of the developing retina, an intersection of biology, vision, and art!

A need for continued collaboration

TSRI Science Day 2026 concluded with remarks from Dr. Levitt, who thanked everyone involved in making the day’s events possible and urged multidisciplinary collaboration to continue making headway in cancer research. He pointed out that teamwork is what has made recent progress in the field possible.

“A cancer diagnosis is not just a cancer diagnosis—there's so much heterogeneity, which has brought about a revolution in applying precision medicine to treatment through research, training, and education,” Dr. Levitt said. “That’s why when we got together to think about what this year’s TSRI Science Day theme would be, advances in cancer came up and it was the right time to talk about how far we have progressed and where we are now.”

Thanks to TSRI Science Day’s organizers and supporters

Pat Levitt, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, Senior Vice President and Director, TSRI

Co-organizers: Bridget Ann Fernandez, MD, MS, FRCPC, FCCMG, FACMG; Rohit Kohli, MBBS, MS

Symposium Committee: James Amatruda, MD, PhD; Shahab Asgharzadeh, MD; Yves DeClerck, MD; Laura Perin, PhD

Poster Session Committee: Christopher Kuo, MD; Catherine Argyriou, MSc, PhD; Andrew Cheng, MD; Joy Gibson, MD, PhD; Anna Kamitakahara, PhD; Katherine Matho, PhD; Jessica M. Schwartzman, PhD

TSRI's Space Team, The Office of Training, Education, Career Planning and Development (TECPAD), and the Research Advancement Development and Information (RADIO) Office

The many generous individuals and organizations that support research at CHLA—in particular, CHLA Trustees Megan Nelson, Cheryl Saban, PhD, Haim Saban, and The Saban Family Foundation.

The youth and their families who participate and collaborate in research studies at CHLA

Source: https://www.chla.org/blog/research-and-breakthroughs/chlas-2026-tsri-science-day-focuses-advances-understanding-cancer