It is a pleasure for us to welcome you to Porto for the 24th Edition of Porto Cancer Meeting.

This international meeting is organised annually by Ipatimup since 1990, and will be held for the first time under the aegis of i3S – Institute for Research and Innovation in Health, the largest health research institute in Portugal. This year, the scientific program of the 24th Porto Cancer Meeting will focus on “Liquid biopsy: bringing precision medicine closer to oncology”.

Cancer is a complex, dynamic and heterogeneous disease. To fully deliver the promise of precision medicine in cancer, a great effort should be placed in developing easily accessible and minimally invasive ways to determine and follow up the molecular portrait of a patient’s tumour. The liquid biopsy has been assuming growing importance as an approach to tumour characterisation. The fast development of highly sensitive and accurate next-generation technologies has empowered researchers with tools to analyse the role of biomarkers in health, disease and treatment response. However, there remain considerable questions associated with biofluid-based DNA/RNA analytical methods which must be solved before liquid biopsies can be fully implemented in clinical cancer routine.

Once more, the Porto Cancer Meeting is bringing together the perspectives of several key players in the field, ranging from researchers to clinicians. Through its characteristic multidisciplinary and informal atmosphere, the meeting will provide a great environment for discussing the latest developments in liquid biopsy as a crucial means for the implementation of Precision Medicine in Oncology and ultimately to further the understanding of the biopathological processes within the cancer patient.

There will be two poster sessions with flash presentations of some of those research works, which will be held in an informal environment, allowing close and detailed discussions between participants.

We wish you all a pleasant and stimulating conference and we hope you will enjoy this beautiful and vibrant city of Porto.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
André Albergaria | Jorge Lima | José Carlos Machado | José Luís Costa (chairman)