On behalf of the organizing committee, I cordially welcome you to the 39th annual (virtual) NOPHO meeting! The meeting will be broadcast from Kuopio in May 6-7 and 9-10, 2022.

Although we deeply hoped to be able to arrange a physical meeting and meet all our friends face to face this year, restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to organize a virtual meeting. Nonetheless, we are happy to have the opportunity to organize the meeting a second time in Kuopio, 25 years after the
first event in 1997.

Much has happened in the field of pediatric hematology and oncology, and in the world, since Kuopio last hosted the meeting. First and foremost, international collaboration has expanded, many new treatment protocols are available – especially for CNS tumors – and survival has improved in many tumor entities. However, the outcome is still poor in certain cancer subtypes, and there’s a lot to learn about mechanisms of therapy-resistant childhood cancers. We have chosen the theme “Together towards individually targeted therapy” to emphasize the importance of international collaboration to improve treatment results by more individualized therapy.

We are proud to present a very interesting scientific program and excellent speakers, who will update us on challenges of genetic predisposition to childhood cancer and diagnostics and treatment of lymphoid malignancies, including CAR-T therapy. We are especially happy with the sessions which concentrate on
oncogenic signaling and clonal evolution in hematologic malignancies, clinical genomics, and novel targeted therapies in childhood oncology. A lot of abstracts have been accepted for oral and free paper presentations providing insights into numerous clinically and scientifically interesting topics.

Talented specialists have agreed to join us, coming from New Haven, London, Münster, Utrecht and Hannover, in addition to our own Nordic and Baltic region. I want to warmly thank all speakers, chairs and friends who have helped us organize this meeting. Many thanks to all sponsors and foundations whose
generous support has enabled this meeting financially. Finally, I want to express my gratitude to the congress secretary Aira Raudasoja and the NOPHO webmaster Elisabeth Broby, whose experience has been an invaluable help and guided us through every step during this process.

Hopefully in the future you will have the opportunity to Kuopio physically, and to experience our beautiful city!

The meeting’s virtual platform will be provided by the Liveto team. Although unfortunately the digital platform will not allow participants to discuss during the sessions, you will all be able to comment and ask questions to experts through the platform’s chat system. We also encourage you to join virtual poster
sessions and discussions that are open during the whole meeting.

You are warmly welcome to Virtual Kuopio. I wish you all a lively and interactive meeting! Let’s go

Together towards individually targeted treatment!

/Kaisa