First Annual Meeting 2023 of the CGI-Clinics Project
We met in Barcelona, Spain for the first Annual Meeting of the CGI-Clinics project, which has just entered its second year. The consortium joined together for two days to share their updates and achievements over the last 12 months, providing an excellent opportunity for partners to celebrate their milestones and look toward the work still to be done over the remaining four years of the project.
From left to right: Santiago Demajo, Olivia Tort, and Nuria Lopez-Bigas (IRB Barcelona)
Project Coordinator, Nuria Lopez-Bigas (IRB Barcelona), began the meeting by reflecting on the lessons learned during the first year, and reminding us of the difference that an optimised Cancer Genome Interpreter tool will make to the genomic interpretation step of precision oncology. “We are not here just to make a tool,” she said, “We are here to make an impact”.
Nuria also explained that IRB Barcelona, who organised this meeting and are coordinating the project, are exploring strategies that can balance open science in clinical settings while maintaining the collaborative and public interest of the CGI-Clinics project.
From left to right: Kostas Stamatapoulos (CERTH), questions from the audience, and Sergi Beltran (CNAG)
During the first day of the meeting, we also heard updates on the technical development of the tool, management and coordination, validation and implementation in healthcare, adaptation of the CGI tool to haematological malignancies, and communication and dissemination. The project has attracted the attention of the healthcare community through dissemination activities, and is having impact at a policy level, with requests for synergies from other European initiatives.
Day two began with a keynote talk from Joaquin Mateo (VHIO), ‘From evidence generation to clinical implementation: bringing genomics to patient care’, which highlighted the need for us to push two fields in parallel: precision drug development, and precision patient care.
Related to patient care, Dr. Mateo saw personalised medicine as an opportunity for caregivers to benefit from more information: “Personalised medicine is about giving an extra layer of information to the physician to inform treatment” said Joaquin.
Joaquin Mateo, VHIO
Talks followed on tumour board best practices, data management and sharing, and patient empowerment and policies. Vanesa Abon (FCAECC) shared that the team are about to start doing patient interviews with 30 participants from 6 countries – France, Greece, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK – as cancer patients are central to the CGI-Clinics project. The project exists to help create better patient care, and the CGI tool relies on data from thousands of real patients. So it is very important to us that patients be active participants throughout the project.
Paula Gomis (IRB Barcelona) then led an interactive workshop to preview and get feedback on the new CGI platform. Participants engaged in small group discussions that proved very fruitful.
Participants during the workshop
This meeting gave us a fantastic opportunity to reflect on the advancement of the project, thanks to the tireless contributions of all partners. As Nuria Lopez-Bigas reminded us at the very beginning of the meeting, “We are here to make something big together. Something that will leave a mark in the community, that will be transformative and will have an impact in the field of precision cancer medicine.”
About the CGI-Clinics Project
The CGI-Clinics project is a five-year EU project, and stakeholders are encouraged to follow its progress by signing up for the newsletter or following the project on social media.
