Annual Symposium 2024

Our 25th anniversary meeting took place at the conference center De Werelt in Lunteren between 3-4 June 2024. It featured multiple scientific sessions, keynote lectures, award ceremonies, NEMO’s festival tour experience, and social gatherings, accompanied by great weather.

Firstly, we thank our sponsors for their generous support, essential for the organization of this symposium: M-Filter, NecstGen, European Society of Gene & Cell Therapy, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Twist Bioscience, VectorBuilder, Chemometec, Promega, Eurofins, ACROBiosystems, PlasmidFactory, NanoCell Therapeutics, ZonMw, and Greiner Bio-One.

The meeting was opened by the NVGCT president Prof. dr. Victor W. van Beusechem. Afterwards, the first scientific sessions started, sponsored by M-Filter and focusing on Cancer Therapy. This session featured invited speaker Inge Jedema (NKI; personalized neo-antigen-specific TCR-T-cell products) as well as selected talks by Jacek Lubelski (NanoCell; tLNPs to generate long-acting CAR-T cells), Jella van de Laak (Maastricht Univ.; anti-cancer activity of genetically modified bacteria), and Tereza Brachtlova (Amsterdam UMC; clinical activity of oncolytic adenovirus ORCA-010 in prostate cancer).

After this, representatives of different exhibitor companies pitched their products and services, stimulating subsequent interactions with symposium attendants at their booths.

Following a coffee break, the one-and-only ZonMw Young Investigator Speed Date Challenge was introduced by Dr. Jan Theys. This challenge offered a huge and unique opportunity for young researchers to jointly write a research proposal, and win 5000€ to execute the project and/or attend an international conference. The expertises and interests of the attendants were assembled into several collaborations, and resulted in multiple innovative and high-quality project ideas. The next day, the finalists would be announced, and they will pitch their proposals in an attempt to win the award.

The winners of last year, Merve Yildiz (Maastricht University) and Julia Minnee (Radboudumc) presented what they had done with their prize. Being master students, they had been unable to actually execute the project of their proposal. Instead, they attended the ASGCT conference in Baltimore, where they gained invaluable insight from interviewing and attending talks/sessions by leading experts in the field of Cell and Gene Therapy. They elaborated about the lessons learned, not only regarding state-of-the-art developments, but e.g. also career challenges as young female investigators.

After a tasty lunch, the symposium continued with a Sponsor Talk by M-Filter, addressing their closed system manufacturing systems. Directly afterwards, the second scientific session took place that centered around considerations when moving from clinical research to clinical practice. Multiple invited speakers from companies, academic hospitals, and the national health care institute addressed many important aspects like study design, market access, product assessment, product access, as well as the patient perspective. This session was ended by an interactive roundtable discussion among the speakers and the audience.

Following another coffee break, the NVGCT Outstanding Achievement Award Winner was presented. This year’s winner, Prof. Chiara Bonini (San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, Italy) presented her impressive work on engineered T-cells for cancer immunotherapy. A summary of her scientific achievements can be read here.

Hereafter, we had our General Assembly, where updates were given about the activities of our board and committees, as well as our finances. The afternoon was finished by a Poster session, accompanied by drinks.

After a sunny and delicious BBQ dinner, the day ended with our famous NVGCT pub quiz, this year led by Quizmaster Dr. Jan Theys and Quizmaster-in-training Prof. Victor van Beusechem. This year’s anniversary edition featured questions about the history of the society, and matching baby pictures to its (previous) board members, as well as more general pub quiz themes.

The next day started with announcing this year’s speed date finalists, to prepare a pitch for later that day. Following this, the third scientific session took place, sponsored by NecstGen and focussed on RNA therapies. Invited speakers and selected abstracts were presented about RNA delivery by extracellular vesicles and different applications of antisense oligonucleotides. Following this, Dr. Melissa van Pel from NecstGen presented about translational considerations for cell therapy production and how NecstGen can help with that.

After a coffee break, the Greiner Award for Best Thesis 2023 was presented. This year’s award was handed to Dr. Franceska Tasca for her thesis on precision gene editing using CRISPR-Cas9 variants and adenoviral vectors. She gave an excellent overview of the impressive work that she performed during her doctoral training. Congratulations!

Following this, the speed date finalists pitched their project ideas.

During a sunny lunch, people could attend NEMO Kennislink’s festival tour table outside. Their entertaining and interactive experience “Holland’s Next Embryo Model” aims to start a dialogue within society about the use of embryolike structures in research. Our symposium attendants were a unique and interesting audience for them to include in their tour, considering our scientific background of the fact that some of us work ourselves with embryo-like structures.

The final scientific session of this symposium centered around PSIDER, a ZonMw program for biomedical research into Pluripotent Stem cells for Inherited Diseases and Embryonic Research. Several researchers working within this program presented their work, ranging from iPSC-based medicine for monogenic (neurodevelopmental) to cardiac disorders. It ended with a presentation about the festival tour of NEMO Kennislink “Holland’s Next Embryo Model”.

After our final coffee break, the closing keynote lecture was given by Prof. Luigi Naldini (San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy, Milan, Italy). He presented impressive work from his long career in the field, about the state-of-the-art developments and future directions in genetic engineering of human hematopoiesis.

Our symposium ended with a final award session. The speed date challenge winners were selected by an independent jury in the audience, who chose Alba Montoro Canelo and Athina Mavropoulou as winners. Their project proposal combined their expertises and experience in cell and gene therapies to create an effective CAR-NK cell therapy using prime editing to target pediatric brain tumors. Moreover, the Best Abstract/Presentation Award this year was handed out to Jella van de Laak, for her work and talk on the use of genetically engineered bacteria as anti-cancer therapy. Congratulations!

After a few concluding remarks, this year’s symposium came to an end. We hope you all enjoyed it and we hope to see everyone again next year!

This summary was provided by the NVGCT website committee.