This week, the OMI hosted its second OMI MEX Institut Pasteur Seminar in Global Health in Mexico City. The Institut Pasteur has partnered with the OMI since 2017 to provide an annual Salzburg seminar on various global health topics, and now the rotation continues in Mexico based on a global health series. From July 4 to 6, 2023, clinicians and researchers from Mexico, Canada, Brazil, and Uruguay, including seven candidates from the international Institut Pasteur network, gathered to learn about viruses, liver, and cancers.
Jean-Pierre Vartanian, PhD, Head of the Department of Virology and Head of the Virus and Cellular Stress Unit at the Institut Pasteur in France, served as the course director. Additional expert faculty included Vincenzo Barnaba, MD, an immunologist and researcher at the Institut Pasteur in Italy, Esteban Domingo, BSc, PhD, professor “ad honorem” and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain, Dominique Franco, MD, PhD, liver surgeon and education advisor at the Institut Pasteur in France, as well as Yu Wei, PhD, a virologist from the Department of Virology at the Institut Pasteur in France.
The three-day seminar included 10 lectures which covered the topics of viruses, restriction factors and cancer, implications of viral population dynamics for disease control, similarities with cancer, molecular biology of hepatitis viruses, benefits and drawbacks of immune responses in infections and cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma: clinical trends. Besides these invigorating lectures, three interactive round table sessions took place, in which fellows and faculty could discuss various topics and research methods, and participants had the chance to pose all their research questions.
With such a dynamic and diverse group of faculty and fellows, we know that participants gained a plethora of knowledge and inspiration by learning from the best global health researchers in the world. Our heartfelt thanks to the Institut Pasteur faculty for continuing to invest in medical education beyond borders!
The OMI MEX Global Health: Viruses, Liver and Cancers seminar hosted young doctors who work in hospitals in Mexico as well as students from the Institut Pasteur network. The level of the fellows was very high, and we had fruitful and interesting discussions together. The course was a real success, and we are all very grateful to have been involved. Many thanks to the OMI and AMSA for their excellent and unfailing organization of the seminar.
