The Personalised Medicine Network launches major international conference

When the Personalised Medicine Network hosts its conference in October this year, the usual annual meeting will be put on hold. Instead, some of the world's most prominent profiles within the field will meet under the title "1st Danish International Conference on Personalised Medicine", to exchange the latest knowledge.

The idea for the conference was born in the steering group behind the research network, who dreamed of an event that would cover the professional breadth of the research field and that could reach further than the network's annual meetings.

"We hope that the conference will help strengthen research in personalised medicine, both by creating a gathering across the Danish environments, and by attracting many more international collaborators," says Professor Anders Børglum, who is the chairperson of the steering group and part of the organizing committee behind the conference.

Scaling Up Requires Funding

A two-day major conference with a series of high-profile keynotes and invited speakers from all over the world is naturally more expensive than the annual meetings usually organized by the network. Therefore, the organizing committee has put a lot of effort into fundraising and has managed to raise capital to finance the event.

"We have applied several places in the Danish fund system and have actually received positive responses from virtually all the places we applied. Occasionally, the funds have had questions or requested that we make minor adjustments to the application, but fundamentally they have been really happy with the concept - and especially with the international aspect, which is also absolutely central to us," Anders Børglum explains.

In the end, the organizing committee has succeeded with four applications and has received financial support totaling DKK 400,000 from Novo Nordisk Foundation, Lundbeck Foundation, Danish Data Science Academy, and the journal Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology.

The First of Its Kind in Denmark

Even though many other Danish centers, networks, and scientific societies arrange professional meetings on personalised medicine, the new conference, according to the organizers, will be something that has not been seen before in Denmark.

"The existing meetings typically have a different focus and are generally more narrow than what we are putting together. We operate with a really broad understanding of personalised medicine and the research that underlies it - and in addition it will be based on Danish strengths, research activities, and international collaborations," says Anders Børglum.

If everything goes well, the organizing committee hopes that the conference will be a recurring event, held every two years. The chairperson of the network is certainly enthusiastic. He emphasizes that there is much to look forward to and plenty of opportunities to gain inspiration from some of the field's top profiles as well as from the very young researchers.

"It will be an explosion of fantastic presentations, and with the beautiful museum as the setting, I am sure that the atmosphere will be absolutely fantastic," concludes Anders Børglum.

Contact

Network coordinator Anja P. Einholm
Aarhus University, HE Administrative Centre – Dean’s Office
Mobile: (+45) 93 50 84 08
E-mail: ape@au.dk