The Harvard Chan Microbiome in Public Health (HCMPH) Center was delighted to host their sixth annual symposium on May 13th! This year the event was run in tandem with a partner Dana-Farber / Harvard Cancer Center workshop. The focus of the joint event was the role of the microbiome in cancer, allowing the symposium itself to highlight the latest in scientific talks and the workshop to provide hands-on practical advice. The program included opening remarks by Dean Andrea Baccarelli (pictured above), keynotes by Jun Yu (Chinese University of Hong Kong) and Marcel van den Brink (City of Hope), and additional talks by Emily Vogtmann (NCI), Robert Holt (BC Cancer Research Institute), Francesco Asnicar (University of Trento), and Florencia McAllister (MD Anderson Cancer Center). Short talks were selected from the 25 total submitted poster abstracts, including William Nickols (Harvard University), Ana Nogal (HSPH), Mirae Baichoo (MSKCC), and Alican Özkan (Wyss Institute).
Additionally, this year the poster prizes were sponsored by Nature Microbiology, and the two recipients – Slater Clay (HSPH) and Yancong Zhang (Broad Institute) – each received a free 12 month subscription to Nature Microbiology.
The HCMPH symposium is offered in a hybrid format, with over 100 attendees joining in person this year and almost 300 online attendees spanning 25 countries. We look forward to hosting the Microbiome Center symposium again in May 2025, stay tuned for more details!
