For some time now, the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer), the world’s body that defines carcinogens, has considered night shift work as a potential carcinogen.

But what about the general population of adults that are not night-shift workers and that sleep too little or go to bed too late – or have “poor quality" sleep, waking up repeatedly during the night? Are they also at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease or cancer and are therefore more likely to die prematurely than people whose sleep patterns are considered healthier?

A Call for one Research fellowship (Bolsa de Investigação) is open at Fundação D. Anna de Sommer Champalimaud e Dr. Carlos Montez Champalimaud (Champalimaud Foundation) in the context of the project entitled “Circadian regulation of pulmonary immunity by neuroendocrine signals”, with reference “PTDC/MED-IMU/2189/2021”, from the Call Nº PTDC 2021, funded by the FCT, through Portuguese National Funds. 

The symposium will be organised as a single-track scientific meeting and count with keynote & invited speakers, talks selected from abstracts and a poster session together with other networking and social activities. It will be held on the 11^th and 12^th of March, 2024 at the Main Auditorium of the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal.

We are used to hearing about vaccines that prevent diseases, protecting us from them before we ever catch them. They train the immune system to recognise and fight common bacteria and viruses. One or several shots suffice to ensure that, when we are actually confronted with the danger, our body’s immune system will produce the right cells and antibodies to protect us: the disease will be prevented before it ever affects our body. Sometimes the vaccine’s effects are lifelong, in other cases you need a periodical boost to maintain a strong level of immunity.

In November 2023, a meeting on malignant melanoma, entitled "Challenging Malignant Melanoma", was held at the Champalimaud Foundation. It was organised by the Dermatology Unit and aimed at doctors and researchers from various specialisations. The organisers consider it a success and intend to repeat this type of event to bring together clinical and scientific expertise.

The objective of this partnership will be focused on research and improvement of medicine dedicated to the treatment of patients with pancreatic cancer.

This collaboration will reinforce scientific exchange between the two institutions and will be led by doctors and researchers from both institutions such as Carlos Carvalho and Sherman Moreira from the Champalimaud Foundation, and Gustavo Guimarães, Bendito Rossi and Fabio Kater from Beneficência Portuguesa de São Paulo.

The largest bottleneck medical research organisations at the forefront of technology face is access to useful data. These difficulties stem from strict policies that limit access to ML teams instead of allowing technology to enable and ensure responsible data use. Potential ML solutions are greatly stifled due to insufficient ability to access, standardise, and aggregate valuable data that continues to be siloed away. Yet, over the last years we have seen two general paradigms emerge to address important technical challenges.

This course is promoted by Champalimaud Foundation's Fior Lab.

The scientific programme will cover

- Protocols for preparation of human cancer cells for injection;
- Generation of zebrafish xenografts (microinjection in the perivitelline space);
- Metastatic assay;
- Protocols for immunofluorescence;
- Mounting xenografts for confocal imaging;
- Confocal session.

Venue

Champalimaud Center for the Unknown, Lisbon

Dates

06 - 10 May, 2024 - 9:00

Application

Deadline: March 15

But it isn’t only a skin cancer: there exist other, though much rarer, forms of malignant melanoma that can develop in other parts of the body.

For instance, mucosal melanoma occurs on mucous membranes, which line various cavities in the body. Mucosal melanomas can be found in the head and neck, the anorectal region, the vulvovaginal region and the urinary tract. These melanomas have a poorer prognosis than skin melanomas.

These two programmes provide students with an integrative, state-of-the-art education in either Neuroscience or Cancer. A central goal of these programmes is to foster inquiry and discovery by encouraging active participation, critical thinking, and problem-solving among the students.