17^th YES Meeting

The 17^th YES Meeting took place at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto, from the 15^th to the 18^th of September 2022 and gathered more than 500 biomedical students from over 20 different countries in Porto to learn directly from world renowned scientists and update themselves on the latest scientific discoveries.

The Meeting took off with the Spinoza Prize Session, where Professor Maria Yazdanbakhsh, Head of the Department of Parasitology of the Leiden University Center for Infectious Diseases, and recipient of the prestigious NWO Spinoza Prize in 2021, gave a lecture on how her study of parasites contributed to the field of Immunology and to the treatment and understanding of many aspects of inflammatory diseases.

After that, the Molecular Biology Session took place. In it, Doctor Leo Otsuki, from the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, in Vienna, presented the work he has been developing on combining genetic technologies and microscopic imaging to understand how the cells of the axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) are able to regenerate an entire limb or spinal cord after injury or amputation. Following this lecture, Professor João Pedro de Magalhães, Researcher at the University of Birmingham, explained how his lab studies the aging process and how we can manipulate it to fend off age-related diseases and improve human health.

The Neurosciences Session marked the beginning of the second day of the YES Meeting. It counted with the participation of Professor Emily S. Cross, Researcher at the Macquarie University, in Sydney, and at the University of Glasgow, whose areas of interest are social robotics and human neuroscience. She presented her extensive research, in which she uses a variety of methods (including brain imaging techniques, action training paradigms, and human-robot interaction) to explore how experience-dependent plasticity and expertise is manifested across brain and behavior. This session also held Professor Shelly Levy Tzedek’s lecture. She is the Director of the Cognition, Aging & Rehabilitation Laboratory at the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben Gurion University, in Beersheba, and in her speech she gave an introduction on the field of social robotics, the potential for the use of these robots in rehabilitation, the dearth of in-the-wild data in this field, and the progress her lab team has made in collecting such data in a long-term in-the-wild experiment with stroke patients.

The Oncology Session followed. It counted with the presence of Doctor Chiara Herzog, Researcher at the European Translational Oncology Prevention and Screening Institute (EUTOPS), in Innsbruck, who spoke about epigenetics as a tool for disease detection and prediction, namely in the detection of breast and ovarian cancer using only samples from the vaginal cervix, and Doctor Pedro Vaz, Researcher at the Champalimaud Foundation, in Lisbon, who presented a new and innovative Early Detection and Diagnosis Tool for lung cancer, based on the analysis of volatile organic compounds in exhaled breath air. Doctor Nuno Gil, Researcher at the Champalimaud Foundation as well, also participated in this Session, helping complement the clinical aspects of Doctor Vaz’s lecture.

This was followed by the Career Session, featuring Professor Alexandre Quintanilha, Emeritus Professor of the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences, who gave a lecture on his life and learnings from a unique career and a lifetime of dedication to biomedical sciences and research.

The Molecular Biology Session included Dr. Sai Chavala who gave a lecture about the importance of bypassing the need for pluripotent stem cells (for the generation of photoreceptor-like cells) on treatment of patients with macular degeneration and Professor Kiwon Ban (City University of Hong Kong) who unraveled how he could regenerate myocardial tissue and its vasculature following Myocardial Infarction using stem cells through a “cardiac patch with bioink”.

To open the last day of the conference, the innovative Ethnicity in Medicine Session counted with the presence of Dr. Claire Fuller, Dermatologist and Chair of the International Foundation for Dermatology, in London, who addressed the importance of global health dermatology for international health and how dermatologists can make a big impact on the overall health of whole communities by raising awareness and addressing neglected tropical diseases with skin signs, as well as Chidiebere Ibe, Professional Illustrator and member of the Global Neurosurgery Committee - World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies (WFNS), who explained how black illustrations are underrepresented in medical textbooks and how ethnically diverse representation would improve healthcare outcomes.

Afterwards, the Pathway of Scientific Discoveries Session, our participants had the honor of listening to Professor Steve Pascolo, co-founder of CureVac and Immunologist at University Hospital of Zurich, as well as Professor Drew Weissman, Professor of Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania, and creator of the nucleoside-modified mRNA-lipid nanoparticle vaccine platform, used in the first 2 approved COVID-19 vaccines by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. Together, they entangled a small portion of what was the complex history of mRNA vaccines, giving an overview of what has been the pathway of this scientific breakthrough, which opened the door to a new era in the field of vaccinology.

To conclude the Scientific Programme, the highly awaited Nobel Prize Session, featured Professor William Kaelin, from the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, who was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in recognition of his discoveries on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. In his lecture he explained how he discovered a process involving the pVHL tumor suppressor gene that contributes to the survival of cells in a hypoxic environment, by interacting with the Hypoxia-Inducible Factor (HIF).”