The 2025 CLIC Scientific Meeting and Conference was held on March 17-19, 2025 at the Chang Yung-Fa International Convention Center in Taipei, Taiwan. CLIC members from 14 countries traveled to the Taiwan meeting, and partners from four more countries joined us online. We had a wonderful host team from Taiwan led by Dr. Pei-Chen Lee, National Cheng Kung University. This conference was supported by the CLIC Foundation, the US National Institutes of Health, and the Taiwan National Science Council.
Throughout the meeting, our members discussed our global childhood cancer research, current methods and data sets we can utilize, and future directions to focus on. Sessions included updates from CLIC’s 18 active pooled analyses projects, the CLIC Genomics Project team, the CLIC geographic information system (GIS) grant writers, the Data Coordination Center (DCC), and other global childhood cancer initiative leaders. We also held a poster presentation session for 15 abstracts.
The CLIC Coordination Group (CG) was excited to invite and hear from potential members from Spain, South Korea, and India. CLIC is working to cultivate more relationships with childhood cancer researchers around the world with case-control studies. The study from Spain, PI Dr. Rabeca Ramis, “Childhood cancer and environmental risk factors (MAICI): A collaboration between ISCIII and FSEHOP,” has access to variables that would greatly contribute to our CLIC GIS data set. The study from South Korea, PI Dr. Eunhee Ha, “ICARE (Initiative for Childhood and Adolescent Cancer REsearch in Korea),” would diversify our population of East Asian children that we could include in our analyses. Finally, the study from India, PIs Drs. Sameer Bakhshi and Jayanth Kumar, “Genomics of childhood cancer in India,” not only adds South Asian children to our research pool, but will also contribute genomic data to the CLIC Genomics Project. We are hopeful that these studies will make great partners with CLIC!
While in Taiwan, our hosts helped organize some cultural activities around the conference. We visited the Evergreen Maritime Museum, which had model ships from different countries and eras. We also attended a half-day guided tour of Lungshan Temple 龍山寺 and historical Dihua Street Shopping District 迪化街商圈. Our group went to dinner together at a Cantonese-style restaurant, Three Coins 大三元.
Overall, we had an incredibly productive meeting! We are so proud to continue to work together and foster connections around the world. Our next CLIC meeting will be held in 18 months, near the end of 2026. In the meantime, keep following our website and our LinkedIn page for our project progress and publications.
Dr. Yen-Lin Liu Keynote Presentation: “Childhood Cancer Incidence and Clinical Treatment in Taiwan: An Overview.”
Dr. Soyeon Cheon Keynote Presentation: “Epidemiological Studies on Childhood Cancer in Taiwan: Database Overview and Research Findings.”
