The Santorini Conferences continue

The 8th Santorini Conference was held from October 3 to 5, 2016 and was attended by over 140 participants from 33 countries. The conference was a highly interactive event, with much communication among a broad mix of attendees: researchers, scientists, academics, industrials, biologists, pathologists, oncologists and genetic epidemiologists, pharmacogenomics and biobanking experts. The sessions dealt with various topics on the latest developments in personalized medicine, genomics and pharmacogenomics tools, and prospective health systems biology. A round table discussed the barriers to the integration of personalized medicine into clinical routine and the most urgent measures to overcome these barriers. The European Society of Personalised Therapy (ESPT) and MSCA-RISE-2015 MAST4HEALTH organized several workshops which were well attended.

The conference was a big success, which would not have been possible without the support of our speakers, chairs, sponsors and participants. Special thanks also to my team (UMR U1122), to Com&Co and to ESPT and MSCA-RISE-2015 MAST4HEALTH, who made this event possible.

This year, we awarded special poster prizes in memory of Gérard Siest, the founder of the Santorini Conference series. We awarded prizes to two posters, one selected by the University of Lorraine and the other by the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC). The University of Lorraine presented the first “Gérard Siest” Award to Perrine Masson from Technology Servier for the poster entitled “Using metabolomics to gain insight into major depressive disorder: a targeted approach on tryptophan pathway metabolites”. The work was the result of the collaboration between the Greater Paris University Hospitals (AP-HP) and the French pharmaceutical company Servier. In this study, 23 metabolites in the tryptophan pathway were measured in the plasma of patients suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) over a 6-month treatment period, as well as in matched healthy controls. A clear alteration of the pathway was observed in the plasma of the MDD patients, with a partial reversion related to disease remission.

The second poster, which was honored with the “Gérard Siest” Award, was selected by the IFCC and awarded to Lindqvist Appell from the Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Linköping University, for the poster entitled “Characterization of the single nucleotide polymorphism 497A>G in the drug metabolizing enzyme thiopurine methyltransferase”.

We are now ready to organize the 9th Santorini Conference. Please save the date for this congress: October 1–3, 2018, Thira-Santorini. We have already taken into account important comments for further improving the organization of the next conference by increasing the interactions between the various disciplines, and academic and industrial research towards an effective “roadmap” for personalized health and therapy. Any new ideas and suggestions from you are welcome.

This conference will be also yours and we count on you to be in Santorini in 2 years!

Sofia Siest

President of the Santorini Conferences