Dear EBMT members, friends and colleagues,
Returning from this year’s busy ASH with exciting developments and results in Cellular Therapies and Hematology, fruitful exchange with colleagues and friends and seeing the increasing visibility of EBMT with more than 30 contributions in the scientific program, I realize how fast the year 2019 has already passed. However, I realized as well that 2019 has been another exciting year for the EBMT, memorable for a wide range of very significant developments and achievements.
In February, the EBMT registry received a regulatory qualification from the European Medicine Agency (EMA) on the use of its patient registry to support novel CAR-T-cell therapies which support our efforts to register all CAR-T cell and other immune effector cell treatment in our registry.
We strengthen our collaboration with EHA and performed together an extremely successful 1st European CAR-T Cell Meeting in Paris early this year. We underline our mission as a global acting society for stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy by signing partnership agreements with the Korean Society of BMT and the Indian Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation as well as preparing the launch of an EBMT China Office in Shanghai in 2020.
I also remember well the numerous educational events such as the EBMT GvHD summit in Warsaw, the International Transplant Course in Barcelona and the very successful Annual Meeting in Frankfurt with more than 5,600 attendees. We started our eLearning project and in 2020 at the Annual Meeting in Madrid physician can take for the first time an EBMT Exam as a personal qualification for Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy. Thus, don’t miss to register in time on EBMT website since the number of participants is limited.
In 2019 we moved forward on our way regarding professionalization by improving structures and workflow in our offices, hiring new staff including advertising a Medical Officer as a new position in our society. It was heartening to witness this year how effectively and committed our staff is working in Barcelona, Paris, Leiden and London. A personal thanks from our Society goes to Carmen Ruiz de Elvira, the long-lasting head of the EBMT registry, who retired by the end of the year, for all of her dedication and leadership in the development of our registry.
Beside the achievements we are still facing with some delays in contracting for the CAR-T cell PASS studies and underestimation of the workload of data migration into our new MACRO System, which requires a lot of patience from our members, but I am very optimistic that we will solve these problem very soon in 2020.
On behalf of our Society, I therefore want to thank all for their hard work in 2019, hope you all will find some rest and time during the holiday season with your families and your loved ones.
On behalf of EBMT, I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy and successful New Year.
Nicolaus Kröger
EBMT President
