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.
Two GLIOTRAIN students based in Luxembourg, Romain Tching Chi Yen (based at ITTM) and Yahaya Yabo (based at LIH) along with another doctoral student, Yue Zhang (also based at LIH), recently teamed up to produce a 2-page comic strip to explain Machine Learning and its applications in Biomedical Research.
Many of the GLIOTRAIN PhD students are now regularly presenting their work at national and international conferences. In April 2019 Francesca Lodi (VIB), Gonca Dilcan Durdag and Jenny Weng (VIB) attended the 3rd VIB NGS meeting, which was held in Antwerp, Belgium.
PPI is a crucial aspect of the GLIOTRAIN outreach strategy and all PIs and ESRs are encouraged to take as many opportunities as possible to get involved in PPI events, schools visits, fundraisers and any other events that help to engage with the wider public and patient communities.
On October 23rd and 24th 2018 the 1st GLIOTRAIN annual meeting, followed by the EC Project Check took place. The Project Check, devised to take place 12 - 14 months into the Programme, ensures appropriate project progress. Management, PIs, students, associated post-doctoral researchers and the GLIOTRAIN Project Officer (from the European Commission) attended the two-day meeting. Ms Kathy Oliver, Prof Martin van den Bent and Prof Monika Hegi, GLIOTRAIN external advisory board members, were also present for the annual meeting.
The European Society for Neuro-Oncology (EANO) 2018 meeting took place in October 2018 in Stockholm, Sweden.
In March 2018, GLIOTRAIN PI Dr Anna Golebiewska gave a talk to high school students in the framework of the 'Researcher at the School' initiative in Luxembourg. She introduced the everyday reality of being a researcher in academia. GLIOTRAIN students at the University of Stuttgart have also been partaking in outreach activities: In June 2018, Nivetha Krishna Moorthy featured in the Research Life Publication from the Universität Stuttgart in an Article called "Cancer Experts of tomorrow".
In May 2018, Dr Ahmed Idbaih, GLIOTRAIN PI (ICM) presented at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2018 meeting that took place in Chicago, IL. Dr Idbaih presented his talk entitled "Safety and preliminary efficacy data from a phase I study of an implantable low intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPU) device for disrupting the blood-brain barrier (BBB) in patients treated by chemotherapy for recurrent glioblastoma (GBM)".