Credit: Oleksii Popov / UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences
For the fourth consecutive time, NMIN was a proud supporter of Vancouver Nanomedicine Day in its 2023 iteration. The conference took place 15 November 2023 in the Pharmaceutical Sciences building on the University of British Columbia (UBC) campus.
Close to 400 people registered for the event and close to 300 attended. Informal feedback was very positive.
"A very good and broad selection of themes were discussed."
"Congratulations on such a successful meeting! We really enjoyed the day, I learned so much."
"Thank you for creating such a high-quality event year after year. I always have an enjoyable learning experience at this event. Most importantly, it is a great opportunity to interact with our local Vancouver nanomedicine community."
"The talks were excellent and so diverse – it is such an exciting field."“I thought the day went very well, with excellent talks given in a state-of-the-art auditorium,” said the event organizer, UBC’s Dr. Urs Häfeli.
“For me, Pieter Cullis’ talk about the future of nanomedicines was a highlight: he explains how there are no limits to what can be done in this area so much better and more clearly than anybody else… And he of course is also an honest scientist who does not forget to mention that we must get better at targeting different organs and gaining control over drug release in the target tissue.”
In addition to Dr. Cullis, many other NMIN researchers and trainees contributed to the days’ activities. Half the presenters were NMIN-affiliated—including Drs Sabrina Leslie, Miffy Cheng, Jiamin Wu, Diana Royce, Colin Ross, Abishek Wadhwa, Nick Dragojlovic, and XuXin Sun—as were all the talk moderators: Drs Shyh-Dar Li, Diana Royce, Sabrina Leslie, Marcel Bally and Colin Ross.
The poster competition was organized by NMIN HQP Abishek Wadhwa, and one of the three competition winners was an NMIN HQP: Tessa Morin (Pharmacy, UBC), whose poster, “Safety of Genome Editing: Development of a Fluorescent Model System to Investigate Reducing Off-Target Genome Edits by Base Editors,” placed third.
“This event is an annual highlight for the Vancouver nanomedicine community, and NMIN is pleased to have been involved since 2019,” comments NMIN’s Executive Director, Dr. Diana Royce. Dr. Royce credits founder Dr. Urs Häfeli for the appeal of the event, noting: “A key component to the success of Vancouver Nanomedicine Day is Dr. Häfeli’s passion for the field, as well as his enthusiasm for bringing people together to share knowledge and network in a welcoming atmosphere.”
“The meeting was so much fun that we plan to do it again next year, probably on November 13, 2024, so please mark your calendars,” adds Dr. Häfeli.
“And let me express my thanks to the two main sponsors of this year’s Nanomedicine Day, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and Precision Nanosystems (now part of Cytiva). We could not have done it without them!”
Photos from the event, and video recordings of most of the talks, are available from the event’s website.