Cells can migrate in a dispersed, amoeboid way, or (as Friedl suggests) in a collective way

Cells can migrate in a dispersed, amoeboid way, or (as Friedl suggests) in a collective way. I enjoyed the conference immensely! Even if it might have sounded like rudeness for sure this was supposed to be a Resminostat genuine compliment (at least, thats how we took it), also considering that it was told by a guy who himself was the fusion of two usually antithetical concepts: fashion style and English nationality. The year 2010 has marked an important event for Italian research in the international scientific panorama: the European School of Molecular Medicine (SEMM) had the honour to host the4th International PhD Student Cancer Conference, which was held from 1921 May 2010 at the IFOM-IEO-Campus (http://www.semm.it/events_researchPast.php) in Milan. The conference was attended by more than one hundred students, coming from a selection of cutting edge European institutes devoted to cancer research. The rationale behind it is the promotion of cooperation among young scientists across Europe to debate about science and to exchange ideas and experiences. But that is not all, it is also designed for PhD students to get in touch with other prestigious research centres and to produce connections for future post docs or job experiences. And last but not least, it is a golden chance for penniless PhD students to spend a couple of extra days visiting a foreign country (this motivation will of course never be voiced to supervisors). The network of participating institutes has a three-nation core, made up of the Netherlands Malignancy Institute, the Italian European School Resminostat of Molecular Medicine (SEMM) and five UK Cancer Research Institutes (The London Research Institute, The Cambridge Research Institute, The Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, The Patterson Institute for Cancer Research in Manchester and the MRC Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology in Oxford). The conference is usually hosted and organised every year by one of the core institutes; the first was in Cambridge Resminostat in 2007, Amsterdam in 2008 and London in 2009 2009, this year was the turn of Milan. In addition to the core institutes, PhD students from several other high-profile institutes are invited to attend the conference. This year participants applied from the Spanish National Malignancy Centre (CNIO, Madrid), the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ, Heidelberg), the European Molecular Biology Labs (EMBL, Heidelberg) and the San Raffaele Institute (HSR, Milan). Moreover four special guests from the National Centre for Biological Sciences of Bangalore (India) attended the conference in Milan. This represents a first step in widening the horizons beyond Europe into a global worldwide network of talented PhD students in life sciences. The conference spread over two and a half days (Wednesday 19th to Friday 21st May) and touched on a broad TNFSF13B spectrum of topics: from basic biology to development, from cancer therapies to modelling and top-down new generation global approaches. The final selection of presentations has been a tough task for us organisers (Chiara Segr, Federica Castellucci, Francesca Milanesi, Gianluca Varetti and Gian Maria Sarra Ferraris), due to the high scientific level of the abstracts submitted. In the end, 26 top students were chosen to give a 15-min oral presentation in one of eight sessions: Development & Differentiation, Cell Migration, Immunology & Cancer, Modelling & Large Scale approaches, Genome Instability, Signal Transduction, Cancer Genetics & Drug Resistance, Stem Cells in Biology and Cancer. The scientific programme was further enriched by two scientific special sessions, held by Professor Pier Paolo di Fiore and Dr Giuseppe Testa, Principal Investigators at the IFOM-IEO-Campus and by a bioethical round table on human embryonic stem cell research moderated by Silvia Camporesi, a senior PhD student in the SEMM PhD Programme Foundation of Life Science and their Bioethical Consequences. On top of everything, we had the pleasure of inviting, as keynote speakers, two leading European scientists in the fields of cancer invasion and biology of stem cells, respectively: Dr Peter Friedl from The Nijmegen Centre for Molecular Life (The Netherlands) and Professor Andreas Trumpp from The Heidelberg Institute for Stem Cell Technology and Resminostat Experimental Medicine (Heidelberg). All the student talks have distinguished themselves for the impressive quality of the science; an encouraging evidence of.