Throughout the year, Oncode Institute organizes various workshops and trainings to share knowledge and facilitate collaboration. Together with Oncode Investigators Leila Akkari, Monika Wolkers and Jacques Neefjes, we recently organized the Tumour Microenvironment and Immunology Meeting in Veenendaal.
More than 100 participants – Oncode Investigators, academics, post-graduate students and industry guests - attended the two-day event on this topic. One of the highlights of the meeting was the participation of Professor Victoria Sanz-Moreno from the Barts Cancer Institute in London, who delivered the keynote speech titled Cyotskeletal dynamics: the Achilles Heel of cancer.
The two days featured four main scientific sessions, covering a variety of lab and technology presentations on topics such as T-Cell regulation and targeting, visualisation and analysis, novel interactions between T-cells and their environment.
Since collaboration is one of the drivers of Oncode, lunch was turned into a lab dating session for Postdoc and PhD students on the first day - which resulted in a series of chalk talk presentations about potential joint projects. In parallel with the lab dating sessions, Oncode Investigators attended a special talk and network meeting, which included a presentation by CRUK Alliance Lab and Therapeutics Discovery Laboratory.
We always welcome feedback, so to sum it up in the attendees’ words - the meeting was a welcomed opportunity to interact, network and learn about new technology, filled with high quality presentations and talks.
Next workshop
We look forward to the next meeting and welcome ideas for topics to be discussed. Please contact Ester Frische if you have any suggestions.
Relevant reading
If you are interested in tumour microenvironment and immunology, you might want to know that recently two reviews by our Oncode colleagues came out: Oncode Investigator Karin de Visser published Immune crosstalk in cancer progression and metastatic spread: a complex conversation, in Nature Reviews Immunology, and Oncode Investigator Ton Schumacher published CD8+ T cell states in human cancer: insights from single-cell analysis in Nature Reviews Cancer.