More than 320 participants from all over Hungary and 14 foreign countries registered for Semmelweis Symposium, which is Semmelweis University’s most prestigious international scientific event and was held for the 27th time this year. At the opening ceremony, Dr. Béla Merkely, rector, and Dr. Péter Lakatos, chairman of the symposium, professor at the 1st Department of Internal Medicine, welcomed the participants. The two-day programme entitled “New approaches in personalized medicine: From prenatal testing to targeted tumour therapy” was hosted by the Basic Medical Science Centre.

Dr. Béla Merkely emphasised that this year’s symposium was attended by participants from 14 countries, which shows that the organizing committee had drawn up a programme of great interest. ‘It is a great honour for us that so many people registered for our most prestigious international scientific event this year, when we celebrate the 200th anniversary of our namesake, Ignác Semmelweis’, said the rector. He reminded the audience that Semmelweis’ discovery of the causes of puerperal fever at his age was an extremely progressive achievement. ‘What could be more appropriate than trying to do the same? This is why this event was organized around a very new and advancing discipline, personalized medicine’, he said.

He added that thanks to the new results of cellular and molecular biology, personalized medicine has gone through incredible development over the past two decades. At the event, the latest diagnostic and therapeutic procedures in endocrinology, oncology, haematology, prenatal genetics and rare diseases are presented, some of which are already in use or are about to be introduced, he said.

Referring to his own field of expertise in cardiovascular diseases, he mentioned as an example of personalized medicine practice that inhibition of PCSK9 enzyme in familial hypercholesterolemia has now become part of routine practice. Furthermore, science is close to treating diabetes with stem cells, said Dr. Béla Merkely. Among the new methods, he also mentioned the early detection of endocrine tumours, and the modern treatment of colorectal and breast cancer as well as solid tumours, or the so-called “liquid biopsy”, with which foetal diseases can be examined from the mother’s blood. The related, unavoidable ethical issues will be discussed in the prenatal block, he explained. A separate section deals with the latest techniques that may sound like “science fiction”, but they are not: these techniques will change our clinical practice in the very near future, he stressed.

Professor Péter Lakatos, chairman of the symposium, presented on the University and Ignác Semmelweis’s career in his opening speech. He also said that the Semmelweis reflex, which is named after the University’s namesake and means rejecting new information due to fixed norms, beliefs or paradigms, still exists. ‘We will break some boundaries and push the envelope during the lectures, but we have to do the same as Semmelweis did: we must not be afraid to contradict fixed norms’, ​​he said. He mentioned that the common platform which connects all the disciplines included in the symposium’s programme is discovery, acceptance of new things, and personalized medicine itself.

The first lecture of the two-day symposium, entitled “Personalized medicine: What does that mean?”, was given by Dr. István Takács, director of the 1st Department of Internal Medicine. Among other things, he emphasized that personalized medicine is a novel conceptual framework which involves the modelling and simulation of diseases based on underlying mechanisms. This is a huge leap from the paradigm of the 20th-century Western medicine to the 21st century, he emphasized.

During the two days of the symposium, there were a total of 33 English lectures from a number of renowned Hungarian and foreign experts.

 

Tamás Deme
Photo: Attila Kovács – Semmelweis University
Translation: Diána Módos