ARCAID Final Symposium

Dear ARCAID Fellows, ARCAID PI’s and ARCAID Partner Organizations,

It is almost 5 years ago that our Cofund project Amsterdam Rheumatology Center for Autoimmune Diseases (ARCAID) started. We managed to recruit outstanding fellows, who moved to Amsterdam from all over the world in the midst of the COVID pandemic, which made their journey even more challenging. Many ups, many downs, many trainings, lectures, courses, zoom meetings, live meetings, congresses and events further they have finalized, or are in the process of doing so, their PhD journeys, and the end of ARCAID is near.

We therefore organized a final ARCAID symposium where the remaining ARCAID fellows presented their research (either with a presentation or a poster) and we also invited two excellent speakers to talk about their journey in research. We invited all who have been part of this in some way, or were interested to hear the outcome, and especially our partner organisations of which some have contributed by hosting a secondment, to join us in this last meeting.

The meeting started with a general overview of the birth of ARCAID by one of our ARCAID coordinators, Dr. Lisa van Baarsen, followed by the first keynote lecture by Andreea Ioan – Facsinay from Genmab (Bridging frontiers: Navigating a career from academia to biotech innovation- My journey through academia and industry in biomedical Innovation).

All presenting fellows were introduced by their PI to show how the research was embedded in the research of the whole group and department. We continued with two fellow presentations (Aoife O’Byrne and Utkarsh Mahamune) before we had some coffee and all ARCAID people went outside for a group picture.

After coffee we had the next four presentations (Giulia Frazzei, Melis Asal, Aiarpi Ezdoglian and Sofia Frigerio) and after lunch we continued with our second keynote lecture: Leendert Trouw, LUMC – (Navigating shifts in academic research: Harnessing autoantibodies and complement for predictive, diagnostic, and therapeutic Breakthroughs). Last but not least Ana Merino Vico presented her research before the afternoon ended with a final summary and thank you from our other coordinator, Prof Ronald van Vollenhoven.

All in all it was a very successful meeting and a nice showcase of all the successes (and some pitfalls) in research in general and the ARCAID project in specific, which we ended together with a nice Dutch “Borrel”..