Meeting in person again – 3TR’s Third Annual Meeting in Amsterdam

After more than two years of virtual annual meetings, the 3TR consortium finally met again in person on 12-13 October in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, kindly hosted by 3TR partner AMC/VUMC. The only previous face-to-face consortium meeting was the Kick-Off Meeting in October 2019 right after the project start.

More than 130 participants including representatives from the Patient Advisory Committee as well as the Scientific Advisory Board were present in Amsterdam. The meeting focussed on sharing progress to date in each work package and the different disease groups as well as discussing strategic aspects on how to advance cross-disease collaboration. It became clear from the presentations that project progress was hampered by closed laboratories, divergent priorities of ethics committees and hurdles in patient recruitment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the Work Package Leaders also reported important progress made over the past year, particularly with regard to the prospective clinical studies and the establishment of Data Interpretation groups (DIG) that will focus on improved definitions of disease response as well as begin to develop hypotheses for non-response.

In addition, the agenda provided ample opportunity for the partners to engage in lively discussions, either in smaller groups or one-on-one. PhD students and postdoctoral scientists involved in 3TR were able to present their work in the project through poster presentations, a dedicated breakfast round table discussion brought representatives of the Patient Advisory Committee together with the disease leads to discuss the patient engagement in the project. In all cases, participants enjoyed the direct interaction and exchange.

“The enthusiasm during the two days was tremendous and there was a great exchange of ideas”, agreed Marta Alarcón (FPS) who coordinates 3TR together with the project leader Terry Means (Sanofi), at the end of the meeting. “We will use the momentum to turn these ideas into plans for the coming year.”

3TR Consortium at the 3rd Annual Meeting in Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Lively discussion during the poster presentations…

…and during the presentations in the auditorium