GLIOTRAIN investigators Professor Markus Morrison and Dr Gavin Fullstone, from the University of Stuttgart, along with GLIOTRAIN industry partner YUMAB and other partners have been awarded a grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Germany) on the theme of Targeted Drug Delivery.
A GLIOTRAIN-organised virtual translational research symposium will take place on the 19th and 26th January 2021. This PhD student training event replaces an in-person event that had been scheduled to take place in Paris in May 2020, but that was unfortunately a casualty of the Coronavirus pandemic. We are now pleased to invite participants to the event in a new, virtual format. To view the programme please click here
Dr Anna Golebiewska and Prof Simone Niclou and GLIOTRAIN ESR Yahaya Yabo from the NORLUX Neuro-Oncology Laboratory at the LIH Department of Oncology (DONC), along with key collaborators, have established a large collection of patient-derived glioma organoids and xenograft models that mimic the specific features of patient brain tumours. The work was undertaken in collaboration with the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL), the Laboratoire National de Santé (LNS), the Luxembourg Centre for System
Several members of the GLIOTRAIN consortium along with key collaborators Prof Roel Verhaak (The Jackson Laboratory , Farmington, CT, USA), Mr David O’Brien and Mr James Clerkin (National Neurosurgical Department, Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland) have recently published (September 2020) a state of the art position paper discussing novel treatment approaches and ongoing trials in the IDH-wildtype glioblastoma (GBM) setting.
In September 2020 the 3rd GLIOTRAIN annual meeting took place. This year the meeting was held virtually. All Beneficiaries were represented with all early stage researchers (ESRs) and many PIs in attendance. The meeting this year focussed on the mitigation measures being implemented centrally to ensure that ESRs will receive the full network-wide training programme despite the current COVID-19 pandemic. This will be done for the most part by moving training online.
In the third year of the GLIOTRAIN programme many of our students have had the opportunity to present their work locally, nationally and internationally. This is key for the programme with regards to the dissemination of results and also important for the overall training of the GLIOTRAIN students.
We congratulate GLIOTRAIN ESR Yahaya Yabo for being awarded the Pelican grant from the Fondation du Pélican. The grant will support Yahaya to attend and participate in a series of relevant training courses and meetings. Earlier in 2019 Yahaya visited the Computational Cancer Biology laboratory at the Jackson Laboratories (JAX) in Farmington, USA, where he worked under the guidance of Prof Roel Verhaak .
On October 25th 2019, the Physiology Dept of the Royal College of Surgeons organised a symposium and raffle to raise awareness surrounding brain tumour diagnosis and to raise vital funds for local charity, Brain Tumour Ireland.
The 2nd GLIOTRAIN annual meeting took place at the Institute for Cell Biology and Immunology at the University of Stuttgart on the 7th and 8th October 2019. The consortium took the opportunity to discuss key issues and all of the ESRs presented updates on their work.
In March 2019, Prof Gabriele Bergers (VIB) gave an oral presentation entitled "Constructing tumor vessels to enhance immunity" at the Keystone Symposia Conference - Cancer Metastasis: The Role of Metabolism, Immunity and the Microenvironment.