We just finished the 3rd Summer School and International meeting, and it could have not gone any better!

Unfortunately, also this event had to be carried out online due to the travel limitations across Europe, restrictions, quarantine and COVID-19 testing. Nevertheless, we organised a very interactive School with a number of workshops in CV writing, interview skills, and career prospects. The ESRs found the transferable skills day very inspiring as they learned about new career options that they have not thought about before, they also had the possibility to receive individual feedback on their CVs.

Besides theoretical lectures on stem cell-based regeneration in the central nervous system, history and evolution of in vitro blood-brain barrier models, quality management systems, good manufacturing practices, and product development and commercialisation, we also carried out online demonstrations and group activities.

The ESRs followed the team of the University of Artois in the lab setting up the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) coculture human model and carrying out BBB integrity control experiments on different systems of BBB models. Following the online demonstrations, the fellows had a group activity during which they designed an experimental plan to perform permeability studies with BBB in vitro model under different conditions. They also had some time for the interpretation of the data collected from the demonstrations.

After the Summer School, the ESRs presented their latest results during the International Meeting (9th July 2021). Every fellow made incredible progress in their project and the PIs were extremely enthusiastic about the work done by the ESRs.