HDIR-4: From Bench to Clinic

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The Croatian Association for Cancer Research (Hrvatsko društvo za istraživanje raka, HDIR) has organized its 4th meeting, HDIR-4, on November 3-4, 2016 in Zagreb, Croatia. This fourth meeting, subtitled ''From Bench to Clinic'', again bought together cancer researchers from basic and translational cancer research.

This year on the first day we had two plenary lectures, given by the plenary speakers Mariano Barbacid (Spain) and Clare Isacke (UK), who is EACR Secretary General. Both are excellent experts in their fields (K-Ras and EMT, respectively) in different types of cancer.

Professor Barbacid in his excellent talk presented an interesting approach with in vivo models for mimicking drug intervention in clinics, which could serve as a guide for designing future clinical trials to treat patients carrying K-RAS mutant tumors.

Professor Clare Isacke gave an interesting lecture (sponsored by EACR) on tumor-stroma crosstalk pathways, focusing on metastasis, treatment resistance and tumor progression in advanced breast cancer.

The first day continued with two lectures on tumor biology and evolutionary origins of tumors. On the second day the meeting covered main topics divided into four sections: Signaling Networks in Cancer, Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics, Cancer Immunology and Diagnostics and Targeted Therapies and Drug Resistance, with eight invited speakers and eight short talks which were selected from the received abstracts. We are happy that many respectable scientists were brought together, devoting their valuable time and knowledge to the success of this Meeting. We had invited speakers from Spain (Mariano Barbacid), UK (Clare Isacke, Daniele Bergamaschi, Jean-Christophe Bourdon), Austria (Fritz Aberger), France (Miroslav Radman and Jiri Zavadil), Hungary (Agnes Kittel), Norway (Zlatko Dembic), Serbia (Karmen Stankov) and Croatia ( Tomislav Domazet Lošo, Maja Herak Bosnar, Sonja Levanat); and short talks from Italy (Vjekoslav Tomaić, Yari Ciribilli), Poland (Anna M. Czarnecka) and Croatia (Nikolina Hanžić, Marko Gerić, Kata Križić, Natalija Dedić Plavetić, Višnja Stepanić). The meeting was closed with a keynote lecture given by Professor Miroslav Radman dedicated to aging and age-related diseases with an overview on malfunctioning proteasomes through comparative studies from DNA repair, replication, mutagenesis, genetic recombination and adaptive evolution, towards evolution of species and carcinogenesis.

We had participants from Bosnia and Hercegovina, Serbia, Italy, Hungary, France, Poland, Turkey and Croatia, altogether about 80 registered participants from research institutes, universities and medical institutions. Besides, we had about 70 graduate students attending lectures and poster section from Faculty of Pharmacy, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Science and School of Medicine, all from University of Zagreb.

The poster session included 29 poster presentations and was opportunity to exchange novel data in oncology research through discussions during lunch break between morning and afternoon sessions. Different aspects of cancer research were covered by the poster presenters – from epidemiology, data analyses, tumour biology, molecular genetics and epigenetics of cancer, including anticancer agents and tumour immunology.

The poster reviewing committee (Clare Isacke and Jiri Zavadil) has elected three poster awards (sponsored by EACR) which went to Iva Guberović (poster “Proprietary Crown Ethers Significantly Inhibit P-glycoprotein Activity”), Lucija Kovačević (““Omics”-approach to Investigate Cancer Associated Phenotypic Changes in Hep G2 Cells After Targeted Silencing of AHCY Hydrolase”) and Margareta Pernar (“Organometallic Ruthenium Complexes with Triphenylphosphane Amino Acid Bioconjugates as Possible Anticancer Compounds”), all three from Croatia.

Thanks to many sponsorships and donations this was again opportunity to highlight the important role of both basic and clinical cancer research. Feedback from attendees was supportive to continue with such meetings again because they are a valuable opportunity for integrating basic and clinical studies, to promote translational research and to promote main aims of HDIR.