Review: Irish Association of Cancer Researchers Meeting 2019

The 55th Annual Irish Association of Cancer Researchers (IACR) meeting took place in the Europa Hotel Belfast on Wednesday 20 - Friday 22 February 2019. It was another successful event with approximately 250 registered attendees for the meeting. As in previous years, the Irish Cancer Society contributed significantly to the sponsorship of the event, in addition to other charities and companies. We were delighted to have so many people visit the stand over the three days including many past and present Irish Cancer Society funded researchers.

The meeting kicked off on Wednesday evening with the IACR Junior Council session which was open to researchers as well as to the public and patients. The Professor Patrick G Johnson IACR Award for Excellence in Cancer Research Outreach session saw six researchers present their research in lay terms. It was evident that much thought went into each presentation to make them understandable and engaging. Well done to all speakers and to the winner of the session Romina Silva, an Irish Cancer Society funded PhD student.

The ‘Engaged and Involved: insights into cancer research’ session saw speakers from a range of backgrounds share their experiences of patient involvement in cancer research and speak about what cancer research means to them. It was a thought-provoking session and a great engaging start to the conference.

The Plenary Sessions over Thursday and Friday mixed the best of national and international speakers in a range of cutting-edge cancer topics including precision medicine; liquid biopsies; digital pathology; and cancer and the immune metabolism. We were delighted to see the inclusion of a session on survivorship in cancer. Surviovorship is an important research topic as there are approximately 165,000 cancer survivors in Ireland. Margaret Grayson (MBE) chaired the session and also spoke about what cancer research meant to her as a patient. Other topics in the session included exercise and cancer and survivorship issues in genitourinary cancers.

The research highlight of the meeting was the annual Irish Cancer Society lecture delivered this year by Professor Peter Jones (Van Andel Research Institute, USA) a pioneer in the field of epigenetics. Prof Jones spoke about his research on the drug 5-azacytidine and how his work on it led to the isolation of the first mammalian determination gene and to the discovery of tumour suppressor genes that are epigenetically silenced in human cancer. The drug has been approved for use in treatment of myelodysplastic syndrome.

The conference closed with the presentation of the IACR award for outstanding contribution to cancer medicine and research to Professor Rosemary O’ Connor (UCC), whose research focuses on growth factor signalling in cancer. Congratulations Professor O’ Connor.

Well done to the IACR committee for a very interesting conference and we look forward to IACR 2020 in Galway.