News from the European Foundation for Nanomedicine (CLINAM)

Dear Readers

From June 23–26, 2013 the European Foundation for Clinical Nanomedicine (CLINAM) and the European Technology Platform on Nanomedicine (ETPN) will organize the annual gathering on Clinical Nanomedicine and Targeted Medicine.

The outcome and standards of excellence from science and technology depend on the people who bring vision to concrete ideas and from there to an outcome that can be used to the benefit of mankind.

One of the great challenges in Nanomedicine and Targeted Medicine is bringing the research results to medical application. Researchers must therefore reflect on how to make their outcomes applicable. The almighty buzzword that has slipped in for this procedure is “Translation”. This translation only works if you know the needs, and see the hurdles to achieve the application, and meet those who already have experience or a specific knowledge to enhance your ideation. This is one of the main reasons why the CLINAM conference was developed: To create again and again the active interdisciplinary debate between all stakeholders and to actively further the pathway of Nanomedicine towards highly effective and safe medicine with subtle influence to the benefit of patients and mankind.

In a time of total information overflow the concept of “conference” might have less value in a world where you can visit more than 10 international meetings every day in your field. You have to make a careful decision where to go, because travelling and attending to a meeting absorbs a lot of time and effort. Therefore you will make the choice for a Meeting of Excellence – You want a new style, to meet all members of your community, an ambience that will let you go back home with lots of creativity, novel knowledge and manifold contacts to translate your results to applicability. You want – as a pioneer yourself – to meet other pioneers in the crossover discipline of Nanomedicine and Targeted Medicine.

CLINAM 6/13 has a few characteristic ingredients which may inspire you to attend: It is a Debate Conference of more than 100 presenataions of 10 min duration that will leave you less exhausted than attending five presentaions of 30 min with 400 slides. Many brave scientists doubted that it is a scientific meeting when you only have 10 min and 20 slides to come to the point of your lecture. CLINAM taught them that it is a unique way to find the experts that you will want to have in-depth discussions with after the meeting during the year to make your own investigations fruitful. Ten minutes are enough to show the uniqueness of your findings.

CLINAM as an international landmark in the field of Clinical Nanomedicine enables you to initiate co-operation with experts of your own choosing. One of the miseries of our continent is the fact that there are many programmes to shape cooperation and to simultaneously profit from governmental funding. This brings together applicants that have not chosen their matching partners but are just competitors becoming an emergency association in need of a gigantic management effort to proceed to results. Working with matching partners with equal goals leads to quantum leaps.

The CLINAM 6/13 conference exists due to its attending community with lots of expertise. During the intervals all participants can ask questions and make statements in their field of expertise. CLINAM is the Summit where you will meet the clinicians, the engineers, the physicists, chemists, biologists and pharmacists, the industrials, the governmental regulation responsible, the investors and the first community of exhibitors with the ideas for novel cases and realized tools. Last but not least you meet the pioneers that have launched already an application based on nanotechnology to the benefit of the patient. If you can join only one Nanomedical Summit in this year your choice could be to attend CLINAM 6/13. The Final Programme (www.clinam.org) might convince you.

With my best regards we hope to welcome you in Basel from June 23 to 26, 2013