Qatar University’s College of Medicine and Turkey’s Gaziantep University (GAU) joined hands to organise the fifth annual meeting of the Middle East Association for Cancer Research (MEACR)
The conference titled “Cancer Disease from Basic Science to Clinic” was held last month in Gaziantep, Turkey. It brought together clinicians and cancer scientists in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region as well as the rest of the world to network and share their research and experiences on a wide range of topics related to cancers.
The conference brought presenters and researchers from Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia in addition to the USA and Canada as well as 50 graduate students from the Mena region were among the conference participants. The presenters also included four faculty members from Qatar University.
Prof Ala-Eddin al-Moustafa, founder and director of MEACR, stated that MEACR is the first association in the Middle East to address cancer research and therapy, bringing together cancer scientists and oncologists from the Mena region together with their colleagues from leading educational institutions worldwide.
The university rector of GAU, Prof Yavuz Coskun, gave a speech in the opening ceremony in which he presented a brief information about GAU and its faculty of medicine.
He encouraged the faculty members of GAU to collaborate with colleagues of the MEACR and especially QU faculty
members.
Prof al-Moustafa maintained that the media in Qatar and the Arab world should encourage private and public companies as well as general population support for cancer research since the majority of the western countries raise around 50% of cancer research funds from private donations.
The programme agenda included other topics such as diagnosis, care, management and prevention of the disease; anti-cancer agents in medicinal chemistry; clinical trials; breast, lung and urologic cancer; nanotechnology; stem cell research; and viral and bacterial infection; among many others.