This year’s Eurolife Autumn Meeting and Eurolife Autumn Symposium were hosted by the Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria. The Consortium gathered in Innsbruck on 19-20 November 2018 to review and evaluate the ongoing activities of the Network, as well as to discuss new initatives and further developments. The meeting was chaired by the recently appointed new coordinator of Eurolife Network, University Medical Center Göttingen.

The meeting concluded with the Eurolife Symposium on Therapeutic Vaccines for Cancer  opened by Prof. Wolfgang Fleischhacker, President of the Medical University of Innsbruck. The Symposium welcomed presentations from renowned academics from the Medical University of Innsbruck and the Leiden University Medical Center with insights into cutting-edge research on immuno-oncology and cancer vaccination.

The draw of the Symposium was the Eurolife Distinguished Lecture of Prof. Sjoerd H. van der Burg  titled Therapeutic cancer vaccination in combination with modulators of the microenvironment to boost tumor specific T cell immunity. Prof. van der Burg was awarded the Eurolife Distinguished Lecture Medal as an act of Network’s appreciation of his achievements and contributions in science.

Prof. Sjoerd H. van der Burg, Ph.D. is a professor in the immunotherapy of cancer, with a special emphasis on immunomonitoring at the department of medical oncology of the Leiden University Medical Center where he leads the experimental cancer immunology and therapy group consisting of about 30 scientists and technicians. The aim of his program is to implement immunotherapy as treatment modality for patients with solid tumors. The program is focused on the exploration of key factors in host-tumor interactions that determine successes and failures in immune control of cancer in order to drive the improvement of immunotherapeutic strategies against solid tumors. The fundamental, translational and clinical studies in his group has led to insights in the role of the tumor immune microenvironment, immune suppression and escape in cancer progression and therapy resistance. Furthermore, it led to the development of a powerful therapeutic vaccine concept and an adoptive cell transfer strategy for the treatment of cancer.