After decades of scientific efforts, the search for successful treatments of many cancers and most metastatic disease, Alzheimer's and other incapacitating and/or deadly conditions sometimes seems to have hit a wall. The time has come to include a new perspective into the equation: the patient perspective, a unique insight that may help bring those walls tumbling down.

The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, in Lisbon, is a research institution specialised in the neuroscience of behaviour and the complex interactions within biological systems, and at the same time it is a medical and technological institution providing specialised clinical treatment for oncology and mental health.

We make countless decisions each hour, each minute. Most of these decisions are made without our active awareness and while they may be inconsequential to us, they can impact other people. For instance, when we choose a seat on the train next to people who look most similar to ourselves or how much eye contact we make (or don’t make). 

Texts by Liad Hollender, Science writer & editor of the CCU Communication, Outreach and Events team.

Illustrations & Motion Graphics by Diogo Matias, designer of the CCU Communication, Outreach and Events team.

Editing by Hedi Young, Digital Content & Social Media Editor of the CCU Communication, Outreach and Events team.

Henrique Veiga-Fernandes, Immunologist, Principal Investigator and one of the Directors of Champalimaud Research; and Ana Paula Pêgo, group leader at i3S - Institute for Research and Innovation in Health, now join an elite group of world-renowned scientists on the Science Review Editors Council.

On the Honourable Mentions, the jury president, anatomopathology doctor and researcher Manuel Sobrinho Simões, referenced that “the jury distinguished (…) two works that show medical research's relevance and urgency; on the one hand cancer and new therapies that mark the research that is being done in this field and, on the other, the pandemic that dominated the year 2020.”

In many species, including humans and mice, the fluctuating levels of the hormones progesterone and estrogen determine whether the female is fertile or not. And in the case of mice, whether she’s sexually receptive or not. 

The change in receptivity is striking. Female mice shift from accepting sexual partners to aggressively rejecting them across a cycle of six short days. How can the female reproductive hormones bring about such a radical behavioural change?

Following the highly successful 2019 edition, attended by around 400 delegates from over 30 countries, the 2021 meeting aims to promote better understanding and application of AI and ML in cancer imaging; and provide a multidisciplinary forum for radiologists, technicians/radiographers, scientists and industrial partners to discuss and interact.