Following the success of our recent BSGCT conference at RHUL 2013, the BSGCT are delighted that the forthcoming annual conference for 2014 which focused on “Advances in Immunology for Gene and Cell Therapy” and held at The Institute of Child Health (ICH), London was a huge success. Immunology impacts all aspects of our work, whether we are trying to avoid, or stimulate immune responses to improve gene therapy approaches for a broad spectrum of diseases. Therefore, the BSGCT were keen to develop an exciting programme to highlight novel developments in this area within the field of gene and cell therapy. This event took a similar format to our one-day event at ICH in 2012, having a focus on engaging early career researchers, PhD, MSc and BSc students who will again have the opportunity to get involved in all aspects of the conference and organisation. This included opportunities to review abstracts, chair sessions and participate in oral and poster presentations of their research. This was an opportunity for the BSGCT to showcase the best of our future scientific talent in the field of gene and cell therapy. We had several prizes on the day to award for high calibre scientific presentations, including the prestigious Fairbairn award for best oral presentation.
We had an exciting programme with sessions covering “Vector engineering for immune therapies/modulation of immune responses”, “Immunotherapy” and finally “Gene therapy vaccines”.