Florijn Dekkers received NRS Travel Grant

Florijn Dekkers, MSc

PHd-student
Department of Laboratory of Translational Immunology
Wilhelmina Childeren's hospital, University of Medical Centre Utrecht

Last spring I attended the Basic Science conference of the European Cystic Fibrosis Society (ECFS) in Malta, which serves as a platform for young and senior investigators from all over the world to exchange knowledge about cystic fibrosis (CF). I really appreciated the meetings’ intimate character; the ~150 attendees stay in the same hotel and share all meetings, workshops, debates, meals and social activities. I therefore had the chance to talk to interesting people working in many different fields and gained a lot of input on my work, also during my poster presentation. I enjoyed learning about new approaches and techniques to model CF, setting up new collaborations, and the nice sea view from my hotel room! The main focus of the meeting was the (pre)clinical development and characterization of chemical compounds that target defective function of the CFTR protein, which is the basic defect in CF. While CFTR-targeting therapy is only available for a small group of CF patients, new developments shared at this conference give hope that in the future most people with CF can benefit from these promising treatments.