MESARGEN News
The new website for MESARGEN published in July 2024
You are currently visiting the new MESARGEN website. Here, you can take part in ongoing research and activities, and learn how to contact us regarding Sarcoidosis. You will also find the most recent updates and press-related content on this site. Welcome to Mesargen, and make sure to bookmark www.mesargen.org!
4th International Symposium on Autoimmune Lung Diseases
The 4th International Symposium on Autoimmune Lung Diseases will be held from 19–20 September in Barcelona, Spain.
Target to specialists in Interstitial lung diseases (ILDs)
Natalia Rivera will be an invited speaker with a talk, “Recent advances in sarcoidosis genomics”
Two MESARGEN consortium abstracts are selected for oral and poster presentation at the ERS 2024 congress
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) 2024 congress will be held from 7–11 September in Vienna, Austria, at RX Wien GmbH, Messeplatz.
The conference theme is ‘Humans and machines: getting the balance right’. The congress program will offer several sessions and learning opportunities related to this theme. While highlighting the increasing role of AI and digitalization in all fields of pneumology (and medicine), the program will also delve into humans' current and future role in AI-supported medical care, including the psychological and humanitarian aspects. It will consider how machines affect the relations between patients and doctors and how new technologies will change healthcare systems, pathways, and organizations.
Natalia Rivera will give an oral presentation titled "Deciphering the genetic tapestry: Insights into sarcoidosis across diverse populations with the MESARGEN Consortium". The presentation is scheduled for September 8, 2024, at 9:45, in the scientific session "Sarcoidosis: Novel Insights in Disease Epidemiology, Immunology, and Treatment". https://k4.ersnet.org/prod/v2/Front/Program/Session?e=549&session=17875
A member of Natalia's team, Dr. Karina Patosova, will present her abstract, "Sarcoidosis shares susceptibility loci with autoimmune disorders and cancers," selected in the Poster Session "Sarcoidosis: immunological features and biomarkers". https://k4.ersnet.org/prod/v2/Front/Program/Session?e=549&session=17815
Natalia Rivera is invited as chair of the session “The search for precision in sarcoidosis” at the AASOG 2024 conference
The Americas Association of Sarcoidosis and Other Granulomatous Disorders (AASOG) 2024 conference will be held on August 15-16 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
The AASOG 2024 conference will focus on a central question: how can multi-disciplinary care, research, and education in sarcoidosis improve patient outcomes, reduce health disparities, and advance disease understanding? To address this central question, we have organized the program into a series of thematic sessions focusing on (i) the development of multi-disciplinary teams and training multi-disciplinary experts, (ii) health disparities in sarcoidosis, (iii) clinical trials and outcome selection, (iv) precision medicine in sarcoidosis and (v) advance disease management.
Natalia Rivera gave patients a webinar on "Sarcoidosis Genetics 101". Event hosted by Life & Breath Foundation
Online webinar scheduled on June 20, 2024, at 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Visit the link on YouTube (below) to revise the webinar: "Sarcoidosis Genetics 101" presented by Natalia Rivera
https://youtu.be/YAsT-YN6o4M?si=mvdYSE3IdO0lfbeT
Natalia Rivera was invited as chair of the sarcoidosis scientific symposium “What causes sarcoidosis?” at the ATS 2024 international conference
The American Thoracic Society (ATS) 2024 international conference was held from May 17 to 22 in San Diego, California, USA.
The ATS International conference is the home of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep professionals, from those in the earliest stages of their careers to those whose research or strides in clinical care have gained them international recognition. Nearly 50,000 professionals attend, present, and learn about the latest advances yearly, meet with colleagues worldwide, and strike new collaborations.
Professor Lisa A. Maier, MSPH, MD, ATSF, and Professor Elliott D. Crouser, MD, co-chaired the symposium.
Natalia Rivera was invited to be a speaker at the Third National Conference on Sarcoidosis and Treatment: Comorbidities and the Holistic Approach to the Disease.
The conference was held April 19-20, 2024, in Padova, Italy, and was organized by the ACSI (Friends Against Sarcoidosis Italy) association and its president, Filippo Martone. The conference focused on topics related to the psychological and social (as well as medical) aspects of sarcoidosis, comorbidities (including some of the less explored ones), and the multidisciplinary approach to the disease, as well as references to basic research and new therapeutic perspectives for people living with sarcoidosis.
Natalia Rivera gave two presentations on 20 April 2024 , one to the scientific community titled "Role of Biobanks in Sarcoidosis Research" and the other to the Italian Sarcoidosis Patient Group titled "What does it mean to adhere to a research protocol? "
Natalia Rivera was invited to chair the complex diseases session “Gene discovery from large-scale studies” at the ASHG 2023 Annual Meeting.
The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2023 annual meeting was held on November 1-5 in Washington, DC, USA. The world’s best and brightest in human genetics and genomics research gather once a year for ASHG’s Annual Meeting. More than 8,000 scientists from around the globe at ASHG 2023 participated in a five-day program comprising the year’s most significant new advances in the field, from invited sessions to workshops to the presidential and distinguished speaker symposium.
The session was co-chaired with Dr. Alejandro Nato, PhD
Natalia Rivera was invited to chair the poster session “Sarcoidosis: Disease Mechanisms and Pathogenesis” at the ERS 2023 congress.
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) 2023 congress occurred 9–13 September 2023. It was a hybrid conference, with the option to participate online or in person in Milan, Italy. This annual congress was the platform to discuss all the latest advances in respiratory medicine and science by the world's respiratory experts.
Natalia Rivera and Dr. Marcel Veltkamp, MD, PhD were the chairs of the poster session “Sarcoidosis: Disease mechanisms and pathogenesis” at the ERS 2023 that covered topics according to the theme of this session and showed a high quality of discussions that contained basic and translational science presented at ERS.
Natalia Rivera was the chair and president of the WASOG 2023 conference.
Last June 19-21, 2023, more than 300 delegates from more than 35 different countries representing over 130 institutions from different continents of the world gathered at Aula Medica, Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, for the World Association of Sarcoidosis and other Granulomatous Disorders (WASOG) 2023 international conference with the theme “Big data - How to move the field towards precision medicine in Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILDs)”
The 3- day intense WASOG 2023 scientific program was carefully drafted by the conference chair Natalia Rivera, junior principal investigator at Karolinska Institutet together with the local and international committees provided to all the delegates the perfect platform to discuss the latest advances in the research of ILDs highlighting topics related to clinical updates and treatment options, big data, biobanks, and single-cell approaches, artificial intelligence applications toward precision medicine, new concepts on disease characterization, phenotypes, and socioeconomic determinants, and Immunological approaches and methods . The conference also offered patient education and serial industry-sponsored sessions.
The MESARGEN consortium, a pioneering international framework funded by the Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation that aims to revolutionize the genomics field of sarcoidosis worldwide, was introduced by Natalia Rivera’s presentation “Genetic architecture of sarcoidosis using multi-ethnic cohorts in the MESARGEN consortium,” which showed novel results from MESARGEN studies under her leadership.
Natalia Rivera received the SLMF's research grant 2021
The Swedish Respiratory Society (Svensk Lungmedicinsk Förenings) (SLMFs) annually announces a lung medicine research grant for projects with exceptionally high quality and good clinical potential.
Natalia Rivera, a junior PI at Karolinska Institutet, was awarded an SLMF research grant of SEK 250,000 for her project: "Integration of omics data to identify potential drug targets in sarcoidosis". She was selected among 18 applications nationwide with a wide field range in pulmonary medicine.
Natalia received the certificate award at the Swedish Lung Congress, held from 27 to 29 April 2022 in Malmö, and presented the establishment of the MESARGEN consortium.
Natalia Rivera was invited as chair of the poster session “Moving forward in various aspects of sarcoidosis” at the ERS Virtual International Congress 2021
The European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress 2021, held on 5–8 September, took place virtually for the second year due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Despite the circumstances, the ERS congress was the platform the world's respiratory experts used to discuss all the latest advances in respiratory medicine and science.
Natalia Rivera and Dr. Vasileios Kouranos, MD, PhD, were the chairs of the poster session “Sarcoidosis: Disease Mechanisms and Pathogenesis” at the ERS International Congress 2021. The session covered topics according to its theme and featured high-quality discussions of basic and translational science presented at ERS.
https://k4.ersnet.org/prod/v2/Front/Program/Session?e=262&session=13548