Conference Review: Making it Personal 2018

Early in November 2018 the EACR hosted the 3rd edition of Making it Personal: Cancer Precision Medicine in the picturesque Italian town of Bergamo, our second new venue in consecutive months! We were delighted to welcome 118 participants from 26 countries to the historic venue of the Centro Congressi Giovanni XXIII.

An exciting three-day programme covered key topics including: immuno-oncology, targeted tumour therapy, drug tolerance, therapy resistance, the computational discovery of cancer vulnerabilities and the clinical implementations of exceptional responder data. The programme boasted world-class speakers including EACR President Alberto Bardelli (Candiolo Cancer Institute, Italy) and keynote lectures from Andrea Califano (Columbia University, USA) and David Solit (MSKCC, USA). The Scientific Programme Committee comprised: Johanna Joyce (Switzerland), Richard Marais (UK), Ze’ev Ronai (Israel / USA) and Daniel Peeper (Netherlands), the Conference Chairperson.

It’s a great opportunity to hear about the state-of-the-art research from speakers who are leading in their areas of research. I found it useful and inspiring.

A variety of networking opportunities were available at this conference with both academic and social benefits. Prof. Andrea Califano led a ‘Meet the Expert’ session on Monday afternoon where he shared his perspective on recent advances in single cell sequencing. On Tuesday afternoon, the Panel Discussion (“How can we make it personal?”) allowed speakers and participants to consider the challenges of implementing precision cancer medicine in the clinic. Later that evening, 70 participants joined the free walking tour of Bergamo, led by local guides. This was followed by the Conference Dinner at the Ristorante La Taverna Colleoni, in the centre of the medieval town.

The conference was fascinating, and the tour and dinner were very fun!

Feedback

After the close of the conference, participants were asked to complete an evaluation survey. We are delighted to have received a 100% satisfaction rating for the quality of the scientific content and 100% of participants also said they were satisfied with the opportunities for networking, interaction and discussion provided at the conference. 98% of participants said they would recommend this conference to others.

The conference was full of interesting topics and amazing speakers. Good and friendly atmosphere.

This was an exceptional meeting due to the composition of the speakers and the major focus. There are meetings that address a specific biology/medical problem, however, this one was different by focusing on future ways to think about oncology.

Timely content, excellent array of topics and speakers, fabulous venue.

Poster Prizes

Posters were presented during two busy discussion sessions accompanied by drinks in the hall bar and foyer. The Poster Judging Panel (comprised of invited speakers) identified the top work presented, and two Clinical & Experimental Metastasis Poster Prizes of €100 were awarded thanks to sponsorship from Springer. Congratulations to the winners:

• Pilar Ayuda-Duran (Oslo University Hospital, Norway)
  “Identifying combinatorial targeted therapies for acute myeloid leukemia patients”
• Patricia Pereira (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA)
  “Combining Lovastatin with Trastuzumab Improves the Targeting and Treatment of HER2+/CAV1+ Breast and Gastric Tumors”

All of the presented abstracts can still be found in the online programme book.

Meeting Bursary Awards

We were delighted to offer 5 EACR-Worldwide Cancer Research Meeting Bursaries to help early-career members to attend. Each recipient received a free registration and funds of up to €500 to support their travel and accommodation costs. Our congratulations go to:

• Kate Eason – UK
• Olívia Pontes – Portugal
• Chloé Prunier – Netherlands
• Mariya Shapovalova – USA
• Xing Xu – Germany

Want to find out more about our bursary winners’ experiences at the conference? You can read their conference reports here – A Participant’s View: Making it Personal 2018