"Een Leven Lang Longen" Conference

Dear colleague,

We kindly invite you to participate in the conference called “Een Leven Lang Longen” (Lungs Lasting a Lifetime) organized by the NRS (https://www.nrs-science.nl/) on Sunday November 22 because we value your input highly.

Aiming to stimulate lung research in the Netherlands, the NRS initiated the National Roadmap of Lung Research together with many health care professionals (http://www.roadmap-longonderzoek.nl/en/).

We are organizing this conference during the weekend of November 21-22 in Almere, the Netherlands, to discuss the most important future developments in lung research and to define research opportunities and strategies for the National Lung Research Program called “Een Leven Lang Longen”. On Saturday November 21, clinical and basic scientists will discuss subjects like asthma, COPD, lung cancer, pulmonary hypertension, CF, IPF and infections with patients. After these small group sessions we will define the most important research questions shared by the different lung diseases.

On Sunday, we will then brainstorm about the outcomes of the Saturday sessions with interested and committed national scientists together with five invited international scientists (Stephen Holgate, Peter Barnes, Laurent Nicod, Nadia Kamel en Katerina Antoniou) and other representatives of NFU, NWO, KNAW, ERS, Horizon2020, and the Lung Foundation. The aim of these discussions is to jointly assign the main and most promising research topics that will create the best chances for Dutch lung research in the next 5-10 years.

We kindly invite you to brainstorm with us on Sunday November 22.

The program on Sunday will include:

•      Summary of outcome Saturday
•      SWOT analyses lung research EU country (UK)
•      ZonMW 2020 programs, what are the opportunities?
•      Horizon 2020 programs, what are the opportunities?
•      Breakout sessions in small groups: Establish and prioritize main research topics for the   next 5-10 years.
•      General discussion and future perspectives for national and international research programs

We aim to finish the program at 15.00.

As space and budget are limited, we can only accommodate around one hundred national scientists. Places will be allotted on a first come first serve basis.

For those of you who cannot make it in November, an additional information meeting will be organized on 8 December in Amersfoort to give you the opportunity to contribute to the National Lung Research Program.

 Please register at your earliest convenience with i.m.van.den.burg@umcg.nl

Kind regards,

The organizing committee:
Dr. Machteld Hylkema
Dr. Barbro Melgert
Dr. Gert-Jan Braunstahl
Sietske Roelinga
Inez van den Burg

Coordinators of the National Roadmap of Lung Research:
Prof. Dr. Dirkje Postma
Prof. Dr. Peter Sterk

The National Roadmap is widely supported by all organizations in the Netherlands dedicated to lung diseases. Please consult our website for more information: http://www.roadmap-longonderzoek.nl/