ISFP meeting report – Edinburgh

The 2nd Joint Meeting of the International Society of Fibrinolysis and Proteolysis and the Plasminogen Activation Workshop. Edinburgh 2018

Report by Alex Slater, University of Birmingham

The 2018 proteolysis and fibrinolysis meeting was held in Edinburgh and consisted of three and half days of talks and poster sessions. This meeting was focused largely on the field of fibrinolysis inhibitors and activators.

The days were split into sessions made up of a series of short 10 minute talks, and these were followed up by longer 1 hour state of the art presentations. This gave the conference a great pace, as we got to listen to a lot of quick talks and also got to enjoy a small number of more detailed talks by leading researchers. The state of the art talks ranged from basic science to clinical research, and a few of the talks bridged the gap between the two areas rather nicely. The speakers for the state of the art talks were all excellent and offered up some up the best talks of the meeting.

The shorter talks served as great ways of initiating discussions in the break/poster sessions, where more time could be spent discussing projects in more detail. After giving my short talk, I was asked a number of very interesting questions which we were able to further follow up with over coffee. This is greatest outcome of this meeting, as the discussions I had with other scientists allowed for new ideas to be bounced around and also provided new insights into the work and results. The breaks were frequent enough that you had time to chat and ask questions to everyone.

Overall the 2018 proteolysis meeting was a great conference. Even though a lot of the talks were slightly out of my field, they were all very well presented and the discussions I had with all the other attendees was incredibly useful.