Extremely high standard of clinical presentations and speakers

The Haematology Association of Ireland Annual Meeting 2022 hosted a stellar array of national and international speakers, including during the President’s Symposium, which was chaired by Dr Feargal McNicholl and Dr Su Maung.

The attendees heard a presentation by Ms Margaret Twohig of NUI Galway, which was titled ‘Trial engineering enhances expanded cord blood NK cell anti-leukaemic activity’. This was followed by a presentation titled ‘Epigenetic dysregulation promotes chemoresistance in acute leukaemia through altered signalling pathway activity’, which was delivered by fellow PhD candidate Mr Thomas Lefeivre of University College Dublin’s Systems Biology Ireland.

In this session, attendees also heard another stimulating presentation by Dr Claire Comerford of Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, who spoke on the topic ‘Von Willebrand Factor in multiple myeloma: Its association with poorer survival and roles in the bone marrow microenvironment’. Dr Comerford was followed by Dr Helen Fogarty of St James’s Hospital in Dublin and RCSI, who delivered a talk on ‘Blood transfusion ameliorates free haem-induced loss of thrombomodulin and endothelial cell activation in paediatric sickle cell anaemia’.

The final part of the session hosted the prestigious Liam O’Connell lecture, which was delivered by Dr Austin Kulasekararaj of King’s College Hospital in London, who chose ‘MDS advances: From biology to therapeutics’ as his lecture subject.

Over the two days, the attendees also enjoyed a comprehensive range of 10-minute oral presentations from doctors in centres from all over Ireland, including from NUI Galway, the RCSI, Queen’s University Belfast, Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin, St James’s Hospital in Dublin, Children’s University Hospital in Temple Street, and University College Dublin, among others. Each presentation was well attended and the delegates heard talks on a plethora of topics ranging from acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) in children; to bone marrow failure syndromes; AML drug resistance; and immune responses to Covid-19 vaccination in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), as well as a wide range of other clinical topics.

The other State-of-the-Art lecture was delivered by Dr Othman Al-Sawaf, Haematologist and Medical Oncologist at University Hospital Cologne in Germany, who spoke on the topic ‘CLL: State-of-the-art and future trends’.