A marvellous conference in Noosa

Written by Dr Cathy Zhao
From August 25th to August 28th, the research team at Westmead Hospital attended the Combined Pacific Research Conference at Noosa, Queensland. The conference was held by The Australasian College of Dermatologists (ACD), the New Zealand Dermatological Society Inc. (NZDSi), Australasian Society for Dermatology Research (ASDR) together with the Japanese Dermatological Association (JDA) and the Japanese Society for Investigative Dermatology (JSID).
The conference was a fantastic and eye-opening opportunity for researchers and clinicians to meet one another and participate actively. Topics varied from interesting confocal microscopy/skin cancer case presentations to high-end science such as psoriasis pathogenesis, cancer genomics and post-capillary venules permeability.
From Westmead Hospital, we had several presentations. Dr Shelley Hwang presented her paper on the cutaneous adverse events of ipililumab and pembrolizumab therapy for metastatic melanoma at the registrar/free papers symposium. I presented my paper on the changes in moles under various anti-melanoma therapies and gave an outline of it at the Poster Teaser session. Professor Fernandez-Penas chaired the clinical symposium on 28th of August. Another poster presentation given by our research team included ‘Cutaneous adverse events of immunotherapies anti-melanoma: Classification and management’, which is now accepted to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, Actas Dermo-Sifiliograficas.
On the side, the main beach of Noosa was a lovely hangout for us after the conference each day, especially considering the four full days of warm sunshine and the conference centre Sofitel being just opposite the main beach.