The 5th BSGT Annual Conference   was held at   Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh   7th-9th April 2008

Heriot-Watt University on the outskirts of Edinburgh provided a Scottish setting for the 5th annual conference, and excellent facilities in which to enjoy the challenging and diverse programme that the Scientific Committee, led by Professor Andy Baker, had put together. The 3 day format was structured to include a public engagement day, an educational symposium and a plenary opening session followed by 8 sequential sessions covering key areas of gene and cell therapy research. Within the latter were invited speakers who are research leaders in their field, proffered abstracts of submitted material and the prestigious Fairbairn award symposium for the top 4 abstracts from young researchers. This format allows maximum opportunity for engagement between students and post doctoral researchers with senior scientists throughout the conference. In addition the first ever BSGT Ceilidh was extremely well attended and offered a unique networking experience!

The Fairbairn Award Competition was won by Veronique Bachy of King’s College London who presented her work on development of a ‘stealth’ adenovirus vaccine vector. The Fairbairn Award Competition is open to UK-based PhD students or researchers who completed their PhD within the last 3 years. This Award of £400 is sponsored by the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research and BSGT.

Read more about the conference in the scientific report.

BSGT continues to strive to improve the public and media perception and understanding of gene and cell therapy and key to this was the BSGT public engagement day, held as a satellite event to the main scientific conference. As part of this day BSGT also embarked on a new project to engage pupils in secondary and primary schools with gene therapy. Creative workshops were run by Dr Lizzie Burns for over 300 school pupils in Edinburgh in the run-up to BSGT2008. Read more about the outreach project and view some of the excellent artwork.