World leaders in medulloblastoma researchers gather at ‘Medulloblastoma in the Mountains’ meeting

This January 2023 the annual meeting of clinical and scientific medulloblastoma experts was held in beautiful Cape Town. Forty international leaders in the medulloblastoma field and five local delegates attended the meeting. This meeting facilitates a worldwide community that works collaboratively and is in a unique position to ensure that change happens. The overarching aims of the meeting were.

• To discuss the latest scientific advances and how these may be translatable to patient care.
• To improve the survival and reduce the toxicity for treatment by reducing treatment in those that have good prognosis and intensifying treatment or using new agents in those with a poor prognosis.
• To discuss clinical trials and align strategies for US and European trials, to enable more patients to participate in clinical trials. To ensure research of medulloblastoma biology is translatable to improved patients outcomes.
• Improving the accuracy of diagnosis by the introduction of new biomarkers into clinical practice at the earliest opportunity.
• Enabling equal access across high income countries to the best treatment and care and to discuss the best way to introduce advancements in low or middle income countries.

These aims are ongoing and progress was made in all of the above, the latest unpublished findings were presented in a spirit of trust and collegiality. Of particular importance was the low and middle income countries session where ways of potential help for these countries was discussed. The out of session discussions on trial development and research collaborations were also very valuable. In addition a separate meeting where four of the conference speakers spoke to an in person and on line Sub Saharan neuroscience and neurobiology audience was felt to be very helpful.

We are delighted that the Centre was able to partially sponsor this annual meeting which is vital for ensuring that rapid and coordinated development of new treatments and biological findings benefit medulloblastoma patients as soon as possible.