EuroPMP meeting in Ghent
Thursday June 23rd , a meeting for all the members of the EuroPMP Cost action were held in Ghent, Belgium. This was the first face to face meeting in EuroPMP since the start of the COVID pandemic. Colleagues from all over Europe, all working together to improve the treatment for patients with Pseudomyxoma peritonei attended. Everyone was thrilled at finally getting the chance to meet colleagues face to face after the pandemic to exchange ideas, research results and further promote collaboration.
Many different topics and talks regarding the different aspect of PMP was presented, and we got to hear about basal research, genomic analyses, pathology, radiology and ongoing clinical trials.
From our research group, Anette Torgunrud presented the ongoing genomic analyses of over 100 patient samples highlighting the high mutation rate of GNAS and KRAS. Kjersti Flatmark showed that mutated GNAS can induce an immune response and activation of T-cells in patients with PMP, laying the foundation for exploring the combination of peptide vaccine with mutated GNAS and immune check point inhibition as a possible curative treatment for PMP.
on mutation analysis in PMP
Three early career investigators also got the chance to present their ongoing research, spanning from research with establishment of organoids established from tumor tissue to better understand the biology of the disease, investigating the immune regulation in tumor tissue to a clinical trial investigating when the patients were at risk for developing PMP.
Talks were also given by a PMP survivor and from the PMP patient organization Pseudomyxoma Survivor, both giving very inspiring and insightful talks from the patient perspective, really highlighting why our research is important. As nicely said by Alvaro Arjona from Spain, the patients are the main reason for our research.