In a first for the EACR, we teamed up with AstraZeneca at the end of last year to bring you ‘Drug Tolerant Persister Cells’, a two day virtual conference made available for free to all EACR members. The event proved popular, with 261 delegates tuning in from 39 different countries around the world.
“Fantastic speakers, all focused on a narrow topic of interest!”
We saw an incredibly positive response from the 108 participants who filled out our feedback survey; all of whom said that they would recommend EACR virtual conferences to colleagues based on their experience of the EACR-AstraZeneca virtual conference. The most common reason given for this was the high quality of the talks presented, particularly those given by Yaara Oren and Mariangela Russo. The scientific content was also rated as either ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’ by over 98% of survey respondents.
In their own words, here are some of the highlights mentioned by participants at Drug Tolerant Persister Cells:
This EACR conference gathered together top scientists working on persisters both in bacteria and in cancer, with one community learning from the other and vice versa.
The final discussion at the end of the 8th of December, where a summary of the main highlights was demonstrated and allowed researchers in the area to know what the future research should focus on.
Superb line-up of speakers, balanced between established researchers and proffered papers-flask talks of more junior researchers.
The invitation to the attendees to participate and give feedback at the end of the talks promoted the discussion.
All of the talks were really amazing, however the presentations by Pasi Janne and Trevor Bivona would count as highlights for me.
The level of interaction and networking opportunities continues to be a big draw for those attending EACR conferences. A total of 164 questions and comments were submitted by the audience with the Q&As after each talk being given ample time, with one participant saying “The fear with virtual meetings is that there is no discussion, but that turned out to be not at all the case!”.
#eacrAstraZeneca on Twitter
As always, attendees interacted on social media using the conference hashtag. Here are some highlights from Twitter:
Really enjoyed the excellent discussions and talks in the last couple of days at #eacrAstraZeneca “Drug tolerant persister cells”conference @EACRnews @AstraZeneca #minimalresidualdisease #adaptiveresistance pic.twitter.com/L7noxfo097
— Sara Laudato (@laudato_s) December 8, 2021
Can you spot LeAnne at the #eacrAstraZeneca virtual poster session? Gather turned out to be a very good platform! pic.twitter.com/kWMb4aY96s
— Rossanese Lab (@TEMT_ICR) December 8, 2021
Great talks today at the #eacrAstraZeneca conference ‘Drug Tolerant Persister Cells’. Excellent poster presenting by final year Mol Med student @eabhaosullivan0 on our #KRASi resistant #lungcancer models👏👏@TCDTMI @tcdTBSI @CancerInstIRE @targtlungcancer @stjamesdublin @EACRnews
— Kathy Gately (@kathygately1) December 8, 2021
EACR-AstraZeneca Postdoctoral Fellowship
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At the close of conference, AstraZeneca announced their new Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme in collaboration with the EACR. The fellowships, exclusive to EACR Early Career Members, aims to train the next generation of scientists engaged in innovative research in areas where AstraZeneca has demonstrated leadership through its pipeline and research programs.
All proposed research projects must be basic and/or translational in nature, and have direct applicability and relevance to at least one of breast, bladder, lung, prostate, ovarian or paediatric cancer.
To find out more and apply for an EACR-AstraZeneca Postdoctoral Fellowship, click here. The deadline to submit outline proposals is 14 February 2022.
