Dear Colleagues - Dear Students - Dear Friends

We are delighted to announce the CMMC Symposium 2023 in Molecular Medicine – From Concepts to Clinic: a New Era of Nucleic Acid Therapeutics taking place on September 18 - 20, 2023 at the Medical Campus of the University in Cologne, Germany.

Nucleic acid-based compounds are highly target-specific and, compared to other classes of therapeutics, relatively simple to manufacture for therapeutic purposes. It is now the time to overcome the last hurdles towards the widespread application of this therapeutic opportunity in a growing number of diseases. This goal requires an in-depth understanding of the chemical, biological and clinical challenges in the field.

The CMMC Symposium 2023 - integrating the 37^th Ernst Klenk Symposium - will address these challenges and provide insight into the state-of-the-art pharmaceutical development. We envision to bring newest knowledge of nucleic acid drug research together with basic principles and clinical implications with the hope to boost nucleic acid therapeutic research. The goal is to foster the process of diagnostics and therapeutics drug development through an enhancement of interdisciplinary exchange of physicians, clinician scientists, molecular biologists, bioinformatics, physics, and chemists among other life science disciplines.

The CMMC Symposium 2023  will bring together an outstanding and diverse group of scientists at the forefront of nucleic acid drug research who will share and discuss the latest advances in the following sessions:

• Session 1 - Nucleic acid chemistry (Innate Immunity)
  Veit Hornung (Munich, DE) • Mano Manoharan (Cambridge, US) • Andrea Rentmeister (Muenster, DE)
   
• Session 2 - Nucleic acids delivery and visualization
  Don Hilvert (Zurich, CH) •  Andres Jäschke (Heidelberg, DE) • Mathias Vormehr (Mainz, DE)
   
• Session 3 - Technology and future applications (e.g. mRNAs, ncRNAs)
  Claudia Höbartner  (Wuerzburg, DE) • Vishal Patel (Dallas, US) • Molly Stevens (London, GB) • Maurice S Swanson (Gainesville, US)
   
• Session 4 - Technology and applications development (e.g. Aptamers, RNAi, snRNAs, ASO)
  Annemieke Aartsma-Rus (Leiden, NL) • Manuel Etzkorn (Duesseldorf, DE) • Sam I Gunderson (Piscataway, US) •Nagy Habib (London, GB) • Bruce A Sullenger (Durham, US)
   
• Session 5 - CRISPR and RNA-protein interaction and modulation
  Amanda E Hargrove  (Durham, US) •  Matthias Hentze   (Heidelberg, DE) • Ailong Ke  (Ithaka, US)• Gerald Schwank (Zurich, CH) •  Thomas Tuschl (New York City, US)
   
• Session 6 - Preclinical and clinical Application
  Richard S Finkel (Memphis, US) • Jacob S Sherkow (Urbana-Champaign, US) • Sarah Tabrizi (London, GB) •  Man-Fung Yuen (Hong Kong, HK)

These sessions will be rounded off by keynote lectures and we are honored to announce that Dr. Akshay Vaishnaw (Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, US) and Professor Markus Stoffel (ETH Zurich, Zurich, CH) have already confirmed to participate as keynote lecturers.

The detailed program including invited speakers per session is available here.

We are looking forward to welcoming you and interested members of your institution at the CMMC Symposium in September 2023.

Yours sincerely,
Michal R Schweiger (Inst. for Translational Epigenetics, UoC - DE)
Markus Stoffel (Dept. Biology, ETH Zurich - CH)
Roman-Ulrich Müller (Clinic II of Internal Medicine, UoC - DE)

The Chairs of the Scientific Organization Committee - CMMC Symposium 2023