BSGCT Travel Award – Luned Badder

BSGCT travel grant to fund attendance at the 16th International Adenovirus Meeting, Caerdydd, 2025

Luned Badder, Research Associate, Division of Cancer and Genetics, Cardiff University

The 16th International Adenovirus Meeting was hosted at the Centre of Student Life, Cardiff between the 7-10th of July 2025, and I was fortunate to have received a BSGCT Travel grant to support my attendance. The meeting occurs biennially, and brings together the adenovirus research community from across the globe. Having attended the previous International Adenovirus Meeting in 2023, and already experienced how well it aligns with my research interests, it was a great opportunity to be able to attend for a second time and see some familiar faces again.

The meeting had an incredibly diverse programme, exploring a broad range of research that covered topics ranging from adenoviral structure, biology, as well as potential for therapeutic applications. The sessions were divided into themes that enabled a broad range of those in both academic and industrial labs to present their most recent findings. Although my particular interest is in oncolytic vectors, I found a number of talks in the other sessions very engaging and relevant to our work. The 90 second pitch talks were particularly effective for giving a brief overview of posters and highlighting those that were particularly relevant depending on research interests, and this gave an opportunity for ECRs in particular to showcase their work. As well as the research presented within the lecture theatre, I particularly valued that plenty of free time was incorporated into the schedule for networking, which created a space for informal interactions. The opportunities to network was reflected in the high levels of engagement from the audience during talks and poster sessions. As part of the conference, I was also invited to co-chair one of the sessions, which definitely helped in gaining some confidence and becoming more familiar with the process.

I had the opportunity to present our work in the format of a poster and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to discuss my research in developing a virus-directed enzyme prodrug therapy (VDEPT) to specifically target pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Overall, the atmosphere for the poster sessions was supportive and friendly. I enjoyed having the opportunity to showcase our work, network and receive valuable feedback and suggestions to drive the research forward that will help in my design of experiments to complete datasets for publication. As I’m particularly interested in generating and developing patient-derived organoid models as a translational system for modelling viral infections and testing therapies in disease models, the conference provided a good opportunity to discuss this further with fellow researchers. I found it beneficial to have the poster sessions split across two sessions, as it allowed those presenting to still engage with other presenters, and have plenty of time to do so.

One afternoon of the conference was dedicated to a social event, where attendees were able to walk around Cardiff Castle and grounds and participate in a walking tour of Cardiff – I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to learn a bit more about Cardiff Castle and its history with our group of conference attendees. A conference ‘farewell dinner’ was further hosted by the organisers on the last night of the meeting which provided a great opportunity to be in a more relaxed setting for socialising.

I am extremely grateful to the members of the BSGCT Board who gave me the opportunity to attend this meeting, present our work and learn of other ongoing research.