A huge amount of work goes into the EBMT scientific programme each year, with many experts volunteering their time to ensure the event gives delegates the best experience possible. These efforts are led this year by Scientific Chair Dr Anna Sureda. Here, Anna gives us some background on her own career and some detail on the work that has gone into EBMT 2020, including some of the changes to include new sessions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Q: Hello Anna and welcome to EBMT 2020. For our delegates who do not know you, can you tell us where you are based and what is your area of specialty.
A: I am the Head of the Clinical Haematology Department at the Catalan Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, Spain, and, for the last few months, President of the Spanish Group for Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (GETH). I studied medicine in Madrid and I also completed my residence there. I moved back to Barcelona, the city where I was born, in 1991 and spent 20 years as a haematology consultant in Hospital de la Santa Creu I Sant Pau in Barcelona. After a short stay as a senior consultant in lymphomas and stem cell transplantation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, UK, I went back to Barcelona. I have been basically interested from the very beginning in lymphomas and haematological malignancies, and in stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy strategies in general.
Q: How did you become a haemotologist, was there a key moment that made you decide this was the specialty for you?
A: This happened when I was a medical student and I attended the lessons related to this area. I was really fascinated with the physiology and pathophysiology of the bone marrow stem cells, with the richness of symptoms and signs presented by patients with haematological malignancies and the complexity of some of the treatment strategies applied. I was lucky enough to be able to pursue these initial dreams, to become a haematologist and later on, to specialise in this area.
Q: Tell us about how you became involved with EBMT and have progressed to now become Scientific Chair of the meeting.
A: I started actively participating in EBMT many years ago, back in 2002-2003. I was elected as chair of the Lymphoma Working Party of the EBMT in 2004 for 6 consecutive years and, when I stepped down from my position, I was elected secretary of the organisation (from 2010 to 2016). In this sense, I participated in the EBMT board for 12 years in a row. After stepping down from the secretary position, I have still been very active in the Lymphoma Working Party, from a scientific point of view presenting projects and supporting projects from junior colleagues and also from an educational point of view; I have been the organiser and co-organiser of the educational course of the Lymphoma Working party for the last 16 years. Rafael Duarte, the president of this year annual meeting offered me the opportunity to act as a scientific chair of the event, it was an honour for me to accept this position and to participate in the organisation of the meeting.
Q: How much time is involved in creating the programme of the meeting, and how many people assist you? Are there many meetings involved?
A: Creation of the programme of the meeting is quite a long but I would say a clear process. It involves the organisation of a local scientific committee that is composed by relevant people of the country with known expertise in the different fields of stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy, not only from the adult patient point of view but also from the paediatric point of view. A preliminary programme is prepared by the local organising committee, but this also needs the feedback from the Scientific Council of the EBMT Board. The final programme is made up of the input of these two groups of professionals.
In additional to the main programme, there are also many parts of the meeting that are dedicated to other professionals devoted to the field of stem cell transplantation: nurses, pharmacists, psychologists … amongst others. The content of these sections also represents a mixture of what has been proposed by the local experts and by the relevant people of the Board of the EBMT.
Q: How do you decide what makes it into the programme, and what does not?
A: There are two factors that impact in the subjects included in the scientific programme: the scientific novelty and interest in front of the scientific community and the potential repetition of titles and topics with respect to programmes from previous years.
Q: What are some of the topics that are new to this year’s programme?
Before the world has hit by the COVID-19 pandemic the topics that were somewhat new for this year meeting were those related to CAR T-cell strategies, bridging strategies to improve results of haematopoietic stem cell transplantation, and personalised medicine in the setting of stem cell transplantation. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic has seen this new topic introduced for obvious reasons in the scientific programme, with various sessions covering the issues caused by the virus.
Q: If you have time, what are some of the sessions you will try to watch in this new-style online congress for 2020?
A: There are many highly interesting scientific sessions that I would like to attend. If I have to choose some of them, I will try to attend the keynote speaker presentation, the presidential symposium, some of the joint sessions between EBMT and other sister scientific transplant societies and the educational sessions related to CAR T-cells and other immunological strategies beyond CAR T therapies. In addition to that, there are sessions that I will also be attending because I am either chairing or participating as a speaker in them.
Q: What are some of the challenges you have faced switching the congress online due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
A: Switching from a face-to-face meeting to a virtual one has been quite a complicated decision to take. Unfortunately, the initial dates of the meeting could not be accomplished because of the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic and, although a second attempt with a face-to-face meeting was organised for the end of August, it became clear several months ago that that was not going to be not possible because of the lack of stability of the pandemic in Spain and in other European countries and around the world. In this sense, we had to reinvent ourselves, get in touch with the providers of the platform that was going to work better for us, modify the entire programme to make it acceptable from a visual format point of view and make the necessary arrangements to inform all the different partners.
Q: Will you be scientific chair 2021 meeting scheduled for Madrid? Has the work already begun?
A: Yes, I will be the scientific chair for EBMT 2021 which is going to be happening in Madrid. The programme and the organisation of the next EBMT is already a work in progress!
Thank you Anna, and enjoy EBMT 2020!
