Over 100 project members from across Europe and the US, attended the 7th ERA4TB Consortium Meeting that took place in Barcelona from 15th-16th June 2023.
Prior to the official meeting kick-off, 3 satellite workshops were held on the 14th June, on the topics of:
- What’s next for ERA4TB’s preclinical in vivo models led by Institut Pasteur (IPP) and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M)
- Ethics issues concerning early clinical trials led by Servicio Madrileño de Salud (SERMAS)
- Project sustainability led by SYNAPSE
This provided ERA4TB members with a chance to discuss in detail some of the most pressing issues facing the project at this stage.
The Consortium Meeting itself included presentations from key project partners describing areas of asset progression over the last 6 months, and highlighting challenges and future considerations. There were also demonstrations of integrated data platforms and discussions on plans to address the feedback from ERA4TB’s recent external mid-term review.
Two members of ERA4TB’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), Gilla Kaplan and Marco Cavalieri, attended the meeting and provided their feedback on what they had heard over the previous days. Both SAB members commented positively on how ERA4TB was progressing and its achievements to date;
“The analysis of how capacity and expertise complement each other to determine the flow of efforts among the organizations is highly valuable” Gilla Kaplan
“Impressive breadth of investigations have been already conducted both on new methods and with possible TB drugs candidates, and more will come. Kudos!” Marco Cavalieri
The meeting was wrapped up with comments from ERA4TB’s project leads and it was noted that it was 25 years since the landmark publication in the Nature journal that discussed the mapping of the TB genome, authored by ERA4TB Scientific Lead, Stewart Cole.
Alongside the meeting, filming took place for a new ERA4TB promotional video, watch this space for its release over the next few months!
