The Porto European Cancer Research Summit 2021.

Key stakeholders from the cancer research continuum met in May 2021 at the European Cancer Research Summit in Porto to discuss priorities and specific action points required for the successful implementation of the European Cancer Mission and Europe's Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP). Speakers presented a unified view about the need to establish high-quality, networked infrastructures to decrease cancer incidence, increase the cure rate, improve patient's survival and quality of life, and deal with research and care inequalities across the European Union (EU). These infrastructures, featuring Comprehensive Cancer Centres (CCCs) as key components, will integrate care, prevention and research across the entire cancer continuum to support the development of personalized/precision cancer medicine in Europe. The three pillars of the recommended European infrastructures - namely translational research, clinical/prevention trials and outcomes research - were pondered at length. Speakers addressing the future needs of translational research focused on the prospects of multiomics assisted preclinical research, progress in Molecular and Digital Pathology, immunotherapy, liquid biopsy and science data. The clinical/prevention trial session presented the requirements for next-generation, multicentric trials entailing unified strategies for patient stratification, imaging, and biospecimen acquisition and storage. The third session highlighted the need for establishing outcomes research infrastructures to cover primary prevention, early detection, clinical effectiveness of innovations, health-related quality-of-life assessment, survivorship research and health economics. An important outcome of the Summit was the presentation of the Porto Declaration, which called for a collective and committed action throughout Europe to develop the cancer research infrastructures indispensable for fostering innovation and decreasing inequalities within and between member states. Moreover, the Summit guidelines will assist decision making in the context of a unique EU-wide cancer initiative that, if expertly implemented, will decrease the cancer death toll and improve the quality of life of those confronted with cancer, and this is carried out at an affordable cost.

Quality and safety requirements for sustainable phage therapy products.

The worldwide antibiotic crisis has led to a renewed interest in phage therapy. Since time immemorial phages control bacterial populations on Earth. Potent lytic phages against bacterial pathogens can be isolated from the environment or selected from a collection in a matter of days. In addition, phages have the capacity to rapidly overcome bacterial resistances, which will inevitably emerge. To maximally exploit these advantage phages have over conventional drugs such as antibiotics, it is important that sustainable phage products are not submitted to the conventional long medicinal product development and licensing pathway. There is a need for an adapted framework, including realistic production and quality and safety requirements, that allows a timely supplying of phage therapy products for 'personalized therapy' or for public health or medical emergencies. This paper enumerates all phage therapy product related quality and safety risks known to the authors, as well as the tests that can be performed to minimize these risks, only to the extent needed to protect the patients and to allow and advance responsible phage therapy and research.

Detection of airborne genetically modified maize pollen by real-time PCR.

The cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops has raised numerous concerns in the European Union and other parts of the world about their environmental and economic impact. Especially outcrossing of genetically modified organisms (GMO) was from the beginning a critical issue as airborne pollen has been considered an important way of GMO dispersal. Here, we investigate the use of airborne pollen sampling combined with microscopic analysis and molecular PCR analysis as an approach to monitor GM maize cultivations in a specific area. Field trial experiments in the European Union and South America demonstrated the applicability of the approach under different climate conditions, in rural and semi-urban environment, even at very low levels of airborne pollen. The study documents in detail the sampling of GM pollen, sample DNA extraction and real-time PCR analysis. Our results suggest that this 'GM pollen monitoring by bioaerosol sampling and PCR screening' approach might represent an useful aid in the surveillance of GM-free areas, centres of origin and natural reserves.