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EBMT 2021 Annual Meeting - Clinical Achievement Award: Manuel Abecasis

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Events

GS1 Opening Ceremony - Sunday, March 14, 18:00 - 19:15, Auditorium 1

Professor Manuel Abecasis is the recipient of this year’s EBMT Clinical Achievement Award. He has recently been appointed as the Director of the Portuguese Bone Marrow Donor Registry, and runs a private practice.

Manuel pioneered the introduction of bone marrow transplantation in 1987 in Portugal, at the Portuguese Institute of Oncology in Lisbon. Together with his team he was also the pioneer in all the relevant aspects in HSCT: cord blood and peripheral blood HSCT, unrelated donor transplants, RIC transplants, extracorporeal photopheresis, use of GMP-expanded MSC and haploidentical transplants among others.

He has collaborated actively with EMBT and CIBMTR since 1987, and set up the Portuguese Registry for Haematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation at the Ministry of Health, where all Portuguese HSCT are registered.

He was also instrumental in setting up the Portuguese HSC Donor Registry (CEDACE), one of the largest European registries with over 400,000 volunteers listed and HLA typed, and is its Director.

His other roles include as Associate Professor at Lisbon Nova Medical School, and serving as Director of the Portuguese Institute of Oncology and as National Transplant Co-ordinator. He is currently President of the Portuguese Association against Leukaemia (APCL) and Director of the Portuguese Medical Association Board for Clinical Haematology.

Q: Congratulations Manuel! Tell us how you felt on learning you have been awarded this year's Clinical Achievement Award?

A: I must say it was a great surprise to have been awarded such a prestigious prize. I am very honoured by this great distinction! 

Q: How did you first became involved with EBMT, and which roles have served in the organisation.  How important is it to have an organisation such as EBMT representing our specialty?

A: My involvement with EBMT goes a long way back when I attended the anual meeting for the first time in 1985. Since then I have been present in every meeting, with one exception! When I pioneered BMT in Portugal in 1987 we started reporting all consecutive transplants to the EBMT Registry filling up the MED A and follow-up forms, a process that has continued to this day!  It will continue even though I am no longer in charge of the program.

I have participated in many collaborative studies and co-authored several studies. I serve as chair or co-chair in many sessions of this year’s annual EBMT meeting, and also had the honour to host the 2018 meeting in Lisbon.

The EBMT is the most robust organisation in the field of heamatopoietic transplantation in the world and has been intimately involved in many relevant advances in the field. 

Q: How has your work been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially with the current surge of cases in Portugal?

A: When the COVID pandemic reached Portugal, at the end of February 2020, we were very concerned about its consequences in our patients and reduced significantly our activity for about 6 weeks. This allowed us to set up a contingency plan which included testing patients and staff, imposing restrictions on visitors, adoption of strict protective measures and, because the Health Ministry declared cancer Institutes to be COVID free, all infected patients were transferred to other hospitals. With all these measures in place we were able to increase our activity back to normal by May 2020 and we have remained in this position since then. 

Thanks Manuel and we hope you enjoy this year’s online EBMT Congress.

Clinical Achievement Award: Manuel Abecasis