On April 22nd, 2026 the yBIS 3rd Annual Meeting took place at UZ Gent. Over 150 young immunologists from all over Belgium gathered to celebrate and engage in science. A few stats in that regard: 62% of our academic attendees were PhD students, 17% postdoc, and 14% master students. Among those, 33% came from UGent, 20% from KU Leuven, 14% from ULB, 7% from ULiège, UAntwerp, or UCLouvain, 6% from VUB, and finally 3% UHasselt.
This year, there was an unintentional focus on cancer. Indeed, our three keynote speakers are cancer experts, with Alicia López Bruzos (PI at MPI Bremen, DE) working on cancer in cockles, Jan Remsik (PI at VIB-KU Leuven) explaining his work on leptomeningeal metastases, and Alba Sánchez Montalvo (CIMA, Universidad de Navarra, ES) explaining how inhibiting non-sense mediated RNA decay could improve neoantigen expression in cancers. Alba also explained her science communication work and her volunteer work in space biomedicine. Funnily enough, both Alba and Alicia had already met at the 73rd Lindau meeting.
Our keynote speakers were joined by three additional speakers: Clémence Alwardi (Roche), Amber de Visscher (argenx) and Lilina Sokol (Rega-KU Leuven). During our panel discussion on scientific careers, moderated by our spokesperson Hind Hussein, we discussed our misconceptions of industry, the struggles of work-life balance, how to deal with bullying, and we tried to normalize the feelings of inadequacy a lot of us can be feeling.
We had 52 posters and 9 selected oral presentations.
The Best Oral Abstract was awarded to category to:
Evi Duthoo (UGent)
Best Poster Award: Alicia Gordún Peiro (VUB)
This year, we again highlighted the importance of sharing results that are not in line with expectations, as this is important data too that will help advance science.
Best Negative Data Award: Océane Bruneel (KU Leuven)
We would like to thank all our members for contributing to this splendid edition of our yBIS Annual Meeting as well as our Communications & Events team. See you next year!
Hind Hussein
Spokesperson yBIS
YoungBIS 