Tenth International Conference on Progress in Vaccination Against Cancer (PIVAC 10), Cambridge,UK, 27th–30th September 2010: New hopes and strategies for cancer vaccines

The Progress in Vaccination against Cancer (PIVAC) series of conferences celebrated 10 years of existence by returning to Cambridge, where the first meeting was held in the year 2001. This year, the conference at St Catharine’s college was full of hope for the future of immunotherapy against cancer with the introduction of prophylactic vaccines, combination therapies and the use of genetic vaccination (DNA vaccines) using old or new antigens vaccine formulations combined with the stimulation of innate immunity, the use of Toll-like receptor (TLR) agonists and inhibition of checkpoint blockade to overcome the immunosuppression created by the tumour microenvironment, offer exciting possibilities and new strategies. Indeed, enthusiasm is running high amongst immunologists who are working to eradicate cancers following the recent completion of several large scale, randomized phase III trials that have reported positive clinical results. The time when one will be able to immunize patients with minimal or no measurable disease is therefore getting closer as we understand more about the host—tumour relationship that influences regulatory immune pathways.     

Conference Report from the 6th Trends in Medical Mycology Meeting,Copenhagen, 11–14 October 2013: Facing the Global Threat of Fungal Disease

Trends in Medical Mycology (TIMM) has become the essential leading meeting in the field of fungal infections, attracting clinicians and scientists from all over the world to attend state-of-the-art lectures, workshops and meet-the-expert sessions. TIMM-6, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 11 to 14 October 2013, was no exception, featuring presentations highlighting the potentially serious global threat presented by emerging fungal diseases and the continuing challenge of diagnosing and managing affected patients.     

The 28th Conference of the International Society for Chronobiology (ISC) will be held in Bucharest (Romania), at Ramada Parc Hotel on 4–8 June 2014

The eclosion rhythm of a laboratory population of Drosophila melanogaster was studied under 12h light, 12h dark (LD 12:12) cycles. Although most of the flies were found to eclose just after “lights on” in LD 12:12, termed within gate (WG) flies, a few flies were found to eclose nearly 10h after peak eclosion, termed outside gate (OG) flies. The circadian parameters of the clocks controlling oviposition rhythms in the WG and the OG flies were estimated to understand the cause of such differences in the timing of eclosion. The distribution of the fraction of individual flies exhibiting single, multiple, and no significant period in the WG flies was significantly different from distribution in the OG flies. Compared to the WG flies, more OG flies were found to exhibit oviposition rhythm with multiple periodicity, whereas more WG flies exhibited an oviposition rhythm with a single significant period. The fraction of flies with arrhythmic oviposition was similar in both the WG and the OG flies. Free-running period τ in constant darkness (DD) and the phase angle difference ψ in LD 12:12 for the oviposition rhythm of WG and OG flies were significantly different. These results suggest that the differences in the time of eclosion between the flies eclosing within the gate and outside the gate of eclosion are probably due to differences in the circadian system controlling eclosion, which is reflected by the differences in their oviposition rhythm. (Chronobiology International, 18(4), 601–612, 2001)