On friday 17 March the annual Belgian Society for Human Genetics meeting was held in Charleroi.
For our lab Kathleen, Robin, Sophie, Elyne and Bram attended.

Elyne and Sophie presented their work with a poster.
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See you next year in Louvain!

In november Lynn attended the RARE-MED symposium with a poster and was selected for a short pitch to promote her latest work.

The last weekend of November will be a busy one for our lab.
On the 26th you can visit the 'Kankercongres' in Ghent where Kathleen has a talk, more info at https://kankercongres.com/

​And on sunday the annual 'Dag van de Wetenschap' is held, you can visit our labs at MRB1 on the UZ Ghent Campus. More info here.

Begin October the annual European Society for Immondeficiencies (ESID) conference was held in Gothenburg, Sweden.
For our lab Lynn, the only ESID member, attended with a poster presentation.

Whilst in Sweden, she had a scientific meeting with members of the advisory board of her project and visited the Karolinska institute.

Joni went to Turku, Finland, at the end of September for an ERN training workshop.

The workshop was titled 'COMPREHENSIVE GENE PROFILING, MOLECULAR TUMOR BOARD (MTB) AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF PATIENTS WITH RARE ADULT CANCERS'.

On Thursday 15 September our Department of Biomolecular Medicine organized a Science Meeting so every PI could present their team and projects to eachother.

It was a nice opportunity to get to know our colleagues better and learn a lot about all the interesting scientific work that's happening at our Department.
We can't wait for the next meeting.

Elyne, Suzanne and Kathleen attended a HBOC-VUS workshop '​Functional Analysis of Sequence Variants in Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer Genes' in Leiden, the Netherlands. It was a really good organized conference were a lot of in field experts took part in. 

From June 22 until 26 Charlotte went to Montreal, Canada to attend the 17th International Zebrafish Conference (IZFC).
It was a small size conference with all experts in the field of zebrafish research, this allowed a lot of interesting face to face conversations and the ideal place to network.

Charlotte presented her work with a poster presentation and even in a short talk.

The annual ESHG Conference was held in Vienna from 11 until 14 June, for our lab Kathleen, Kim, Robin and Lynn were present.
Lynn had a poster presentation.

It was again a good setting for interesting talks about high level research. And as always great opportunities to get collaborations.
Also the networking event was a perfect place to get informal talks about our projects.

​See you next year in Glasgow!

Begin June Nele participate in a 4-day wet lab workshop entitled 'DNA bisulfite pyrosequencing - from whole genome to targeted gene methylation analysis' in Poznan, Poland.

Nele enjoyed the course and looks forward to use the new techniques in our lab.

Jeroen last paper about the role of Atm in zebrafish is published in the latest issue (Volume 9, Issue 4. July 2022) of Genes & Diseases.
You can find the open access PDF version here.
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We are very proud of our alumni team member and all collaborators! Congratulations!

On May 25th the SING kickoff event was held in the VIB building at the Technologiepark in Zwijnaarde.
About 150 researchers from the Ghent area came together to talk about there single cell research and listen to some very interesting talks.

For our lab Kathleen, Mattias, Lynn and Bram were present.

Yesterday on the 23th of May CRIG organized their annual OncoPoint Symposium. And after all the COVID troubles they could finally celebrate their 5th anniversary.

With Kathleen, Bram, Charlotte, Lynn, Elyne, Nele and Sophie almost our whole research group was present. All the PhD students presented their work with a poster.

Charlotte won the poster prize, congratulations!!!

On saturday 14 May the UZ Leuven held an interuniversitary symposium for young researchers and clinicians called 'Building bridges in pediatric oncology', Sophie had a talk titled '​The psychological impact of genetic testing in pediatric cancer patients and their parents'.

On the 21th and 22th april the joint two day meeting of the Belgian and Dutch Societies of Human Genetics (BeSHG/NVGH) were held in Bruges. Kathleen, Mattias, Lynn, Robin and Bram attended this symposium. Lynn presented a poster about her work on the rare genetic disease Seckel syndrome and Robin was selected for a talk about 'BRCA testing to identify patients eligble for PARPi treatments across different indications'.

The previous day, the 20th of April, the BeSHG/NVHG organised a Genetic Retreat Symposium specifically for young PhD's to train their presentation and networking skills. We compliment the organisation for this initiative. Nele, Elyne, Sophie and Lynn attanded. Lynn presented her work entitled 'ATRIP-deficient patient expands molecular and clinical spectrum of Seckel syndrome' in a fantastic short talk.

On the last day of march the Faculties of Medicine and Health Sciences, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine organized a new edition of Research Day. Kathleen, Charlotte, Elyne, Lynn, Nele and Sophie were present.

Charlotte and Lynn were given the opportunity to presented their work. Charlotte had the full attention of the public with her work about a zebrafish xenograph model for ovarian cancer. Lynn presented her work about the expansion of the molecular and clinical spectrum of the rare disease Seckel Syndrome. Sophie, Elyne and Nele presented their projects on a scientific poster.

​This year's edition was great and attracted a large attendance.

Another new face in our team, we're welcoming a new PhD student: Nele.

​Nele will work on pancreatic cancer, her project is tittled 'Prediction of surgical resectability after FOLFIRINOX chemotherapy for borderline sescetable (BR) and locally advanced pancreatic cancer (LADPA)'.

Good luck with your project Nele!

The annual Oxford Nanopore Community was held online from 30 november until 2 december. Mattias and Bram attended.

Our team continues to grow, we're welcoming two new PhD students: Sophie and Elyne.

Sophie Van Hoyweghen project focuses on the psychosocial dynamics of genetic testing for cancer predisposition syndromes (CPSs) in children.

Elyne De Neef will try to set up in vivo functional assays for the testing of VUS in BRCA2 by knocking-in variants in the zebrafish genome, and subsequently assessing their pathogenicity. This will contribute to accurate classification of VUS.

Welcome Sophie and Elyne, good luck with your projects!