This Monday and Tuesday, September 19 and 20, the second Oncobell Symposium was held in the auditorium of the Bellvitge University Hospital. Under the slogan “building bridges between science, medicine and people” the congress is a forum to discuss the latest advances in basic and clinical research with top-level cancer professionals. In this year’s edition, researchers from IDIBELL and others national and international research centres participated.
Dr. Mariosol Soengas, from the CNIO in Madrid, opened the congress with a plenary session on melanoma. Subsequently, throughout the entire meeting, IDIBELL professionals chaired various sessions focused on genomics, immunity against cancer, new clinical technologies, metastasis or the development of resistance to cancer treatment. At the end, we had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Alberto Bardelli, from the University of Turin, spoke about immunological surveillance in cancer.
This is the second year that the IDIBELL Molecular Mechanisms and Experimental Therapy in Oncology research program has organized the Oncobell Symposium. This program, made up of 21 research groups and 91 principal investigators, fights cancer collectively and in a multidisciplinary manner, focusing on both molecular mechanisms and experimental therapies.
Dr. Isabel Fabregat and Dr. Josep Maria Piulats, both coordinators of the Oncobell program, declare: “We believe that stimulating communication between research groups can lead us to build better ideas that allow us to transfer knowledge from basic research to clinical practice more easily“.
The Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) is a biomedical research center created in 2004. It is participated by the Bellvitge University Hospital and the Viladecans Hospital of the Catalan Institute of Health, the Catalan Institute of Oncology, the University of Barcelona and the City Council of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.
IDIBELL is a member of the Campus of International Excellence of the University of Barcelona HUBc and is part of the CERCA institution of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In 2009 it became one of the first five Spanish research centers accredited as a health research institute by the Carlos III Health Institute. In addition, it is part of the “HR Excellence in Research” program of the European Union and is a member of EATRIS and REGIC. Since 2018, IDIBELL has been an Accredited Center of the AECC Scientific Foundation (FCAECC).