From 31 March to 2 April 2022, the 3rd International Conference on Lymphocyte Engineering (ICLE 2022) was held in Munich to share advances in lymphocyte engineering.
From 31 March to 2 April 2022, 394 leading scientists, clinical researchers and representatives from industry and various start-ups from 24 countries met in Munich for the 3rd International Conference on Lymphocyte Engineering (ICLE 2022) to share advances in lymphocyte engineering.
The ICLE is one of the most important conferences on lymphocyte engineering. The high quality of the scientific programme and the ideal networking opportunities attract many top-class scientists to attend. For Munich, this is an exceptionally good opportunity to present itself as a representative congress location and to emphasise its strong focus on the knowledge cluster of medicine.
The ICLE is one of the most important conferences on lymphocyte engineering. The high quality of the scientific programme and the ideal networking opportunities attract many top-class scientists to attend.
ICLE is a conference that gathers academic institutions and industry so that the advances in the field are looked at and discussed from all perspectives and viewing angles. But the MICE destination of Munich also went down well with the participants. After all, the venue, the Holiday Inn Munich City Centre, is very centrally located and offers sufficient space: most delegates were able to stay directly at the Holiday Inn at a special conference rate.
Immediately after Dirk Busch from the Technical University of Munich welcomed the participants at the Holiday Inn on the afternoon of 31 March, Adi Barzel stepped up to the microphone. The senior lecturer at Tel-Aviv University in Israel is not only co-chair of the ICLE conference, but also President of the Israeli Society for Gene and Cell Therapy (ISGCT).
Other high-profile speakers included Malcolm Brenner from Baylor College of Medicine (USA), Michel Sadelain from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (USA), Luigi Naldini from San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy (Itsaly), Stan Riddell from the University of Washington(USA), Jennifer Brogdon from Novartis Institute for BioMedical Research (USA). After two-year pause, they were exited to meet again and exchange scientific data and ideas with their peers from Europe among whom were Hans Stauss from University College London, Anja Feldmann from Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden (Germany), Maurus de la Rosa from Sangamo Therapeutics (France) and Richard Harbottle from the German Cancer Research Center and many more.
"After all those Zoom meetings, it was fantastic to meet everyone face to face again."
In total, more than 50 speakerstook the stage and presented their latest developments and scientific findings. Above all, the fact that they were finally able to meet in person again, under the given Covid-19 protection conditions, of course, pleased many conference participants, such as Prof. Michael Bachmann from Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden: "After all those Zoom meetings, it was fantastic to meet everyone face to face again."
Kenes Group was responsible for the organisation of the conference and the smooth running on site.
Over the past five decades, Kenes Group has earned and maintained an outstanding reputation as a global provider of conference and association management services. It is recognised as a world leader in meeting planning and is one of the few global PCOs specialising in medical and scientific events.
With a team of over 350 professional, multicultural and multidisciplinary employees in 18 locations on four continents, Kenes Group offers global expertise with personal, local know-how. Founded in 1965 in Tel Aviv and headquartered in Geneva, the conference organiser has to date hosted over 3,800 conferences in more than 100 cities around the globe.
For ICLE 2022, the Kenes staff not only took care of the smooth running of more than 50 speeches, but also the 18 supporters and exhibitors, the 11 e- and 90 poster presentations and the presentations in the product and research theatre. Thanks to the practical conference app, interested parties could easily enter their questions and receive an answer in no time. The app also showed when and where which keynotes and presentations were taking place. The Grosse Saal of the Holiday Inn Munich City Centre was equipped accordingly for the coffee breaks, networking and poster presentations. Designed for up to 500 people, the participants could easily meet in the hall and talk in peace about the topics important to them, even in small groups.
For the Bavarian capital, the fact that the ICLE was held in Munich for the first time is a great significance - it underlines the importance of the location for all areas of medical research. After all, the city is considered a centre for science, research and technology and is therefore ideally suited as a venue for such a high-profile conference. In no other German city are there so many scientists working on the development of new therapies and medicines or conducting medical research. With two medical faculties with over 260 professorships and 8,000 students, 350 companies in the field of medical technology, internationally renowned university hospitals, the Max Planck Institute, the Helmholtz Centre, it is obvious that Munich with its expertise is an attractive environment for all areas of the healthcare industry.
In no other German city are there so many scientists working on the development of new therapies and medicines or conducting medical research.
The congress industry is no exception, this is proven by the numerous medical events that have taken place in Munich in recent years, such as the EAACI Congress, ESC Congress, Visceral Medicine, ESMO, or Infotage Dental.
For PCOs like the Kenes Group, however, another argument is decisive in choosing Munich as a venue - the world-renowned mix of high-tech, business know-how and the proverbial Bavarian attitude to life.
The Holiday Inn Munich City Centre is ideally located for conference guests just five minutes by S-Bahn from the famous Marienplatz and ten minutes by S-Bahn from the main railway station, from where it takes just over half an hour to reach Munich International Airport. The business hotel offers 582 rooms, contemporary elegance, an all-day restaurant and extensive conference facilities.
18 meeting rooms with space for up to 550 guests are suitable for every type of event, from small seminars to large conferences or exhibitions. The smallest room measures 19 square metres and the largest 527 square metres. State-of-the-art audiovisual technology and conference specialists are also available. In the air-conditioned rooms, a pillow menu ensures restful sleep, flat-screen TVs provide entertainment and WLAN is included. Those who want to explore the hotel's surroundings will quickly find themselves on the banks of the Isar river, in numerous cultural and typical Bavarian gastronomic establishments.
The conclusion of the conference co-chairs, Dr Adi Barzel and Prof. Busch, was unsurprisignly very positive: "The meeting was an inspiring occasion for the speakers, the participants and our scientific community in general. All the feedback has been excellent."
