Thanks to the initiative of our Alumna Rada Faizova (CGC'20, PhD) post-doc at the CHUV, we had the opportunity to visit AGORA, the Cancer Research Center.

About 50 alumnae and alumni were welcomed by Prof. Susan Gasser, Director of the ISREC Foundation and Director emer. of the FMI (Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel) who presented the institution. This was followed by the presentation of two research axes by Prof. Douglas Hanahan, Director of the Laboratory of Translational Oncology and Prof. Christoph Merten, Associate Director of the Laboratory for Biomedical Microfluidics of EPFL at AGORA.

We then split into five groups to visit one of the five laboratories, namely those of Prof. Hanahan, Prof. Merten, Prof. De Palma, Prof. Huelsken as well as the Bioengineering & Organoids Technology platform directed by Dr. Gaspard Pardon who is also an EPFL Alumni (MT'08).

The evening ended with a drink and it was the occasion for many participants to ask questions or simply make new contacts.

A big thank you to the AGORA team for making this evening so exciting and unique.

AGORA

AGORA was inspired by the vision that the integration of progress in cancer research into clinical practice can be accelerated by bringing together interdisciplinary research teams of clinicians, cancer biologists, immunologists, bio-informaticians and bio-engineers. Initiated by the ISREC Foundation in 2013, the AGORA building was opened in 2018. The functioning of this translational cancer research center reflects a partnership between the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), the University of Lausanne (UNIL), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) and the University of Geneva (UNIGE).