XVII SECAL CONGRESS Santiago de Compostela (Spain),14–17 November 2023

From November 14th to 17th, SECAL organized its 17th congress in Santiago de Compostela.

Prior to the start of the congress, on Tuesday 14th, five workshops were held in which 55 attendees participated. They had the opportunity to receive practical and interactive training on the following topics: cryopreservation of mouse sperm, acquisition and analysis of PET imaging studies with FDG in rats, communication in animal research, handling, welfare and pathologies of aging rodents. An additional workshop, on invasive techniques in a porcine model, was held in the neighboring city of A Coruña.

The same Tuesday the opening ceremony of the congress was celebrated at the School of Medicine of the University of Santiago, in the heart of the historic city of Santiago. The scientific program started with the inaugural conference, taught by Professor María José Alonso, about the impact of nanotechnology in personalized medicine, where the contributions that animal research made to current fields such as RNA vaccines and other advanced therapies were highlighted.

In the following days, the congress took place at the Congress Palace of the city of Compostela, with the participation of 360 congresspersons, who attended nine thematic sessions and an oral communications session. The oral communications were selected by the scientific committee among the 61 communications received. Another twelve were presented in poster-flash format, a novelty in this congress edition, and 41 as printed-poster format.

The thematic sessions covered a wide variety of topics, thought to be of interest for the different professional profiles of the Society, such as animal facilities of the future, experimentation with fish or with large animals, the challenges of innovative animal models or preclinical imaging. One of the sessions, biosafety in animal facilities, was done in collaboration with the Spanish Society of Biosafety. The program did not ignore the responsibility of our professionals with the society, so aspects such as ethics and legislation, transparency or current advances in alternatives to animal research had a relevant place, with specific sessions. In addition, two special sessions were held, one dedicated to animal models of aging, taught by Prof. Alejandro Ocampo, from the University of Lausanne, and another on the most frequent problems when filling the annual statistics on animal uses, which were analyzed by Pilar León, from the Ministry of Agriculture. All sessions, each one with three presentations, had great participation from the audience, who were able to ask questions and comments both through the room microphones and the congress app.

In parallel, there was a commercial exhibition with 30 stands from 25 different companies, and which contributed to updating attendees on numerous technical aspects of our work.

On Thursday 16th, the annual meeting of the Society was also held, where different members of the board of directors were replaced, including the farewell of president Juan Rodríguez and the entry of the new president, Angel Naranjo.

On Friday 17th, once the scientific program was over, the closing ceremony acknowledged some of the presented work at the congress: A prize for the best communication voted by a panel of experts, named after our colleague Oscar Pintado, died in 2020, and another for the best communication voted for by the attendees, which in this occasion was named to recognized the founding members of the Society. After very close voting in both cases, the following communications were awarded:

“Oscar Pintado” Award: “Development of a surgical positioning bed for the replication and refinement of knee surgeries in a murine model”, by Cristian Passera and collaborators

“Founding members” award: “Implementation of a rotating environmental enrichment program in mice”, by Josep Moreno and collaborators.

One more time, the SECAL congress served to the continuous training in the different scientific and technical aspects of our work, but even more important, it reaffirmed our commitment to a responsible animal research. The congress ended with the invitation for the next edition, which will be held in Bilbao in 2025.