Reaching out to the scientific community: Successful CARAT meeting and workshop in Freiburg

On June 25-27, 2018, the CARAT consortium met for their extended 3rd Progress Meeting kindly hosted by Prof. Toni Cathomen and his team from the University Medical Center in Freiburg. 2.5 years into the project, the agenda was packed not only with internal monitoring and planning activities but also with exciting external undertakings in terms of dissemination.

The first 1.5 days were dedicated to a CARAT internal meeting where the consortium openly showed and discussed the progress of the project. Overall, the project is evolving very satisfactorily showing great cooperation among the consortium partners. A major topic on the agenda was an internal exploitation planning workshop led by Eurice. The consortium split up in three groups to discuss those results in the project that are most likely to lead to tangible results at the end of CARAT and beyond. The group work resulted in common basic findings on which the consortium will continue to work to develop a clear exploitation plan in the last period of the project.

The 3^rd day started with a joint meeting of CARAT and the ITN EN-ACTI²NG which concentrated on the topics of “CARs (Chimeric Antigen Receptors)” and “TCRs (T Cell Receptor) and enabling technologies” which both consortia share. The Principal Investigators of both projects presented their major research work in a nutshell which left more time for discussions and an extended coffee break used for networking.

In the afternoon, the International Conference on Immunology, Immunodeficiency and Immunotherapy, co-organised by the CARAT consortium, kicked-off with a workshop featuring research work implemented in CARAT and EN-ACTI²NG. In addition to scientific talks from researchers of both projects, Michel Sadelain gave a Key Note Lecture on CAR T cells.