Noticias

Dr Manuel Perucho Closes the 5th Conference in the Successful Series of Barcelona Conferences on Epigenetics and Cancer

- Institucional

Today Dr Manuel Perucho closed the 2nd PMPPC Conference included in the 5th Barcelona Conference on Epigenetics and Cancer: Epigenetic Mechanisms in Health and Disease in a packed auditorium at CosmoCaixa. The event brings to a close the series of five conferences proposed by Dr Perucho in 2012.

Manuel Perucho decided to put Barcelona on the map for international epigenetics conferences in 2012 at the closure of the first Annual conference of the then Institute for Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer (IMPPC).  After securing the support of Dr Andreu Mas-Colell, the Minister for Economy and Knowledge in the Catalan Government and with the aid of Marcus Buschbeck, a group leader of the IMPPC, Dr Perucho secured co-funding over a five year period and the collaboration of "la Caixa" Foundation and B-Debate, the International centre for Scientific Debate of Biocat.

Five centres joined the project, each making a commitment to co-organizing one of the conference series.

BCEC 2013 Challenges, Opportunities and Perspectives
Scientific leaders: Manuel Perucho and Marcus Buschbeck for the IMPPC

BCEC 2014 50 Years of Histone Acetylation
Scientific leaders: Manel Esteller, Alejandro Vaquero, Juan Ausió and Esteban Ballester of the Cancer Epigenetics and Biology Programme (PEBC-IDIBELL)

BCEC 2015 Coding and Non-Coding Functions of the Genome
Scientific leader: Luciano di Croce, ICREA Professor of the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) and Marcus Buschbeck, Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research (IJC)

BCEC 2016 Beyond Cancer Genomes
Scientific leaders: Eduard Batlle, Salvador Aznar-Benitez, Raul Mendez, Institute for Research in Biomedicine Barcelona (IRB), ICREA, BIST

BCEC 2017 Epigenetic Mechanisms in Health and Disease
Scientific leaders: Albert Jordan, Molecular Biology Institute of Barcelona (IBMB-CSIC) and Marcus Buschbeck, Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute

Over five years over a hundred international speakers have participated at events and over a thousand delegates have attended. 

There are now 40 research groups working on epigenetics and cancer in Catalonia and Barcelona is a recognized centre of excellence in the field.  In his closing remarks Manuel Perucho commented that "In 2012 I wondered whether Epigenetics would still be a hot topic in 2017 and now I believe that it still will be in 2027" and expressed his confidence that the BCEC will continue.  Marcus Buschbeck, who has been involved in maintaining the high quality of the whole series summed up the BCEC experience as a great adventure that has strengthened the international epigenetics network and forged new partnerships.

Epigenetics continues to be a strong field of research at the IGTP as the former IMPPC is now the Program for Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer (PMPPC-IGTP) led by Manuel Perucho and consisting of more than 20 scientists working on epigenetic mechanisms and possible treatments in various types of cancer in close collaboration with scientists from other centres and the medical teams of the Germans Trias Hospital on the Can Ruti Campus.