International Synthetic and Systems Biology Summer School (SSBSS) was held in Scuola Normale Superiore – Pisa, Tuscany, Italy (22-26 June). The summer school included 40 hours of lectures from the pioneers in the field including Jason Chin (MRC, Cambridge), Adam Arkin (UC Berkeley, USA), Ron Weiss (MIT, USA), Karen Polizzi (Imperial College London) and Virginia Cornish (Columbia University, USA). Each speaker first introduced the basic concepts related to their expertise; and then described the developments in the field. It was a great opportunity to learn about the recent advances in synthetic biology.
Although I was the only one from ICCVS participating to the summer school this year, I believe that more members from our team will attend in the following years. The summer school was quite interdisciplinary, and it was related to many subjects such as cancer, immunology and mathematical modelling. Besides the lectures, poster sessions created the ideal environment to have scientific discussions with peers (mostly masters, PhDs or postdocs) and lecturers.
In addition to the scientific fulfillment, I also had a lot of fun at the summer school. We managed to visit Florence and Cinque Terre with my friends – whom I met there – in our spare time. We had tons of good food, coffee and memories. I would definitely suggest going to this summer school. Only thing is, mosquitos in Italy have no mercy, so make sure you bring tons of mosquito repellent!
Elif Gediz Kocaoglan
The annual Impact conference, based in Cracow, Poland, is a place you go to keep your finger on the pulse of the business-science-technology synapse. Having had the pleasure to participate in Impact’19, I could observe both the world-wide and local trends in the ecosystem of bioscience and healthcare.
A surprising thing to hear was senior managers of pharmaceutical and insurance companies talk about positive lifestyle changes, holistic approach to health and the roots of disease stemming from lifestyle, overuse of sugar, and… drugs. The ecosystem seems to be moving on from “detect-fix sickcare” to “predict-prevent healthcare” and the next big thing will be technology designed to put the patient in the centre, getting him/her more engaged and aware of the health consequences of their choices.
Both investors and company representatives praised polish scientists, engineers, analytical and data science capabilities, as well as some national funding available. The local challenges they mentioned were beaurocracy around science, a lack of senior personnel experienced in bio-business and the need for more technology transfer offices, proactively seeking promising ideas in academia and supporting the commercialization process. It was highlighted, that to attract new venture capital and to keep the funding and big pharma presence that we enjoy currently, national policies must promptly change, especially those slowing down research or the adoption, refundation and effecive use of nover therapies, such as in the case of Multiple Sclerosis antibody-based treatment.
The Next Health Investment Pitch was a great opportunity to observe a number of promising biomedical startups. The winner, AISENS company, who manufacture innovative movement tracker devices for the purpose of physiotherapy and sport excellence, demonstrated how strategic partnerships, validated and market-tested products, bring success, while no scientifically brilliant project can afford a lack of IP protection, unique selling point or clear business model. This sentiment was repeated on both open and closed meetings by senior pharma and national agencies managers who insisted that in applied science, projects exhibiting a realistic path to market and commercial viability in the polish environment should be prioritised – especially if we’re aiming at building polish biotech industry.
I was happy to notice the word “biotech” being repeated throughout all the event, by representatives of companies, funding bodies and government alike. Especially promising is the focus on building academia-industry consortia and willingness to fund such projects. After two decades of waiting for a polish biotech boom, it may just start.
Mikołaj Kocikowski
Being a PhD student at ICCVS gives several benefits like conducting research at international institutions or participating scientific conferences. My name is Katarzyna Dziubek and I am a lucky ICCVS member who travelled to Atlanta (Georgia, USA) in order to attend AACR meeting that took place between the 29th of March and 3rd of April 2019. Participating lectures of the highest scientific level was one of many other advantages that AACR offers. In addition to this, I was an active participant presenting a poster summarizing “Investigation of tumour intrinsic PD-1/PD-L1 in canine urothelial carcinomas as a spontaneous translational model for human invasive bladder cancer”.
Thousands of researchers, clinicians and oncology professionals join AACR meeting every year to share cutting-edge discoveries, present the highest level of scientific work and professionalism. I spent the first two days attending educational sessions which highlighted crucial topics in fundamental research, cancer immunology and clinical oncology.
The major symposium started during an official opening ceremony, poster sessions were opened and Biomedical Research Fair brought representatives of numerous biotechnological companies presenting their newest technologies. When the conference finished, I was able to spare some time on discovering Atlanta and its most famous touristic attractions including visiting Atlanta’s Aquarium, World of CocaCola and Zoo Atlanta.
AACR 2019 meeting in numbers:
More than 21000 participants
Over 950 scientific presentations
5600 abstracts presented during poster sessions and minisymposia
213 clinical trials introduced
Katarzyna Dziubek
National Institutes of Health (NIH) is one of the world’s foremost medical research centers. An agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the nation’s medical research agency making important discoveries that improve health and save lives (https://www.nih.gov/). Dr Udayan Guha is the investigator at Thoracic, GI Malignancies Branch & head of Cancer Signaling Networks Section which is located in Building 10 at National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA (https://ccr.cancer.gov/thoracic-and-gi-malignancies-branch/udayan-guha). Dr Guha’s group has state-of-the-art tumorigenesis, a quantitative mass spectrometry facility aimed at clarify the perturbed-signaling pathways that cause tumorigenesis and developing immunopeptidomics to identify direct therapeutic implications, strategies for the treatment of human cancer. I am developing a collaboration between the University of Gdańsk and NCI/NIH aimed at developing new methods for immunopeptidomics which is part of the research project concerning the neoantigen discovery pipeline.
Sachin Kote (June 2019)
From the 2nd until the 6th of June five members of the ICCVS (Dave, Sachin, Satya, Marcos) represented our research center at the 67th ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The meeting focused on various topics within mass spectrometry and is the largest conference in the field with more than 6,500 attendees from around the globe.
The conference opened with an interesting talk by Mark Jacobson on the global transition to renewable energy. The next day we gave poster presentations (see attached photos). Marcos showed the results of his research on the proteogenomic landscape of undifferentiated pleiomorphic sarcomas.
During the conference, we attended various talks and workshops and learned about other incredible research projects while visiting posters in the exhibit hall. The conference ended with a dinner in the Georgia Aquarium where we saw sharks and dolphins and got the chance to pet starfishes!
Overall, we enjoyed our time in Atlanta and it was a great learning experience!
Marcos Yébenes Mayordomo
EMBO Workshop took place in Paris, France, between 30th of May and 2nd of June. A big group of ICCVS members attended this workshop, including Robin, Chrysoula, Ala, Javier, Georges, Agata, Ewa, Maria and me (Sara). Robin gave a first talk at the workshop, about the work they are doing in the lab in Paris, particularly about pre-mRNA derived antigenic peptides for the MHC class I pathway, that are generated in the nucleus, Javier gave a short talk during the pitch session regarding bioinformatics strategies for the comprehensive characterization of immunopeptidome landscapes and few of us presented posters during poster session on Saturday.
The workshop covered wide aspects of the antigen processing and presentation topic, including: enzymatic processing and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecule loading, especially in cancer immunotherapy, non-classical MHC presentation, cross-presentation, tickling APCs, targeting APC-Host-Microbe interactions and MHC class II-restricted presentation. There was a lot of speakers from all around the world and it was a great opportunity to discuss potential collaborations. A lot of interesting talks were about peptide splicing, but also about new exotic pathways in cross-presentation. Particularly interesting discussion during all 4 days of the workshop was about trans splicing and obtained results regarding it.
Additionally, every day there was an evening program and chance to hang out and chat in more relaxed atmosphere. We had a bit of free time that we used for visiting the beautiful city. In general, the workshop was very useful and we had a lot of fun in Paris!
Sara Mikac
11th International Conference of Contemporary Oncology took place in Poznań, Poland between the 13th and 15th of March. ICCVS had a strong representation there, namely Ala, Irena, Natalia, Sara, Sachin, Ted and myself (Zuza). Ted gave a talk introducing ICCVS and describing the kind of research we’re interested in; the rest of us presented posters (see attached pictures). The conference focused on clinical aspects of immunotherapy with a few talks on molecular biology. The most interesting talks (in my opinion) were covered in Novel Cancer Therapeutics sessions and covered novel approaches to cancer treatment that are still the in pre-clinical phase.
Additionally, there were a lot of talks summarizinig clinical trials of different drugs (including immunotherapeutics, chemotherapeutics and small molecule inhibitors). A complete novelty to me was a presentation by professor Pravin Sehgal from New York Medical College on membraneless organelles, which are formed by phase separation and have no membrane (for example nucleoli in the nucleus).
After the conference we went for a walk in Poznan old town. We had a great time!
Zuzanna Urban-Wójciuk
