European Cystic Fibrosis Society

Report from the 5th European CF Young Investigators Meeting (EYIM) 23-26 August 2011

The 5th EYIM was held at the Faculty of Medicine in Lille, France from 23 to 26 August 2011. 45 young scientists from 10 European countries and from Canada were selected by an international jury to present and discuss their projects. Besides the interest of the results presented, this conference is a unique opportunity for young researchers to get connected and prepare future collaborations.

Participants had the privilege of attending a private viewing of the movie “Oxygen”, which has been released in Belgium and The Netherlands and will be launched in France on the 12th of October 2011.

Topics covered during the meeting were wide: gene therapy, genetics, study of the CFTR protein, inflammation, microbiology, patient quality of life, etc. Senior European researchers chaired the discussions, with some of them providing a state of the art lecture as part of their session. At the end of the three day conference, three prizes were awarded for the best presentations by young researchers.

The awardees are:
- Florijn Dekkers, Netherlands, “Characterization of altered inflammatory signalling pathways in CFTR-defective cells”;
- Karlene Lynch, Canada, “Genomic characterization of phage DC1, a candidate for use in phage therapy against the Burkholderia cepacia complex”;
- Marianne Carlon, Belgium, “Long-term follow up of fetal airway gene transfer with AAV5 in a mouse model”.

Karlene Lynch, Florijn Dekkers and Marianne Carlon with their awards.

The awardees will be given the opportunity to give a presentation at the next ECFS Conference in Dublin http://www.ecfs.eu/dublin2012

This year the UK CF Trust has joined the five patient associations who originally founded the EYIM (Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and The Netherlands). Cystic Fibrosis Canada renewed its partnership of the conference by funding the participation of two Canadian students. The cost of the conference is covered by the associations, with financial support from Chiesi Pharmaceuticals.

We look forward to the 6th EYIM meeting which will be held in Paris in 2012.