Meeting reports

The conference was curated to spotlight cutting-edge research on topics such as cytoskeletal regulation, vesicle trafficking, nuclear transport and targeted therapies for cancer and genetic disorders. The programme featured a distinguished lineup of international speakers and offered multiple opportunities for oral and poster presentations, especially for early-career scientists.Major themes were as follows:An important consideration throughout was to ensure that there was a diversity of small G-proteins discussed. The small G-protein family consists of over 100 proteins in 5 main groups. Recent therapeutic advances in the Ras field mean that this subsection of the field has been getting lots of attention at international clinical and pharma conferences. We wanted to ensure that the meeting was a suitable forum for researchers that are representative of the whole small G-protein community and for a good exchange of ideas across the basic-translational science spectrum.Scientifically, we achieved our goal of ensuring that a broad cross-section of small G-proteins was discussed—albeit dominated by Ras, Rho and Rac research that is a fair reflection of current critical mass in the field. Researchers are increasingly using systems approaches to investigate their favourite protein(s) and so we often hear about cross-talk between the G-protein families and with other pathways. In a departure from previous iterations of this meeting, we included the patient voice to help ground the audience (over half of whom consisted of researchers from industry or academic researchers). The powerful advocacy in the opening talk by Terri Conneran from KRAS Kickers was inspirational for many in the room. Exciting advances in treatments and new models for systems and translational approaches conveyed the strong momentum that currently exists.A strong feature of the meeting was the novelty in content and presenters. Everybody who wanted to give an oral presentation at least got the opportunity to give a flash presentation if they weren’t selected for a short talk. Most of the formal presentations were derived from abstract submissions, meaning that we had many PhD students and postdocs who were given a platform. For many, this was their first time presenting a talk at a conference. It also meant that we had a much higher proportion of pre-published and new data being discussed than at conferences dominated by the usual cohort of established speakers regularly invited to meetings. It was refreshing to hear so many new voices. During the opening address, we explicitly encouraged questions from PhD students and early-career researchers, and it was great to see the response to this, with approximately equal contributions from established versus early-career audience members. A prize was given to an early-career audience member for outstanding audience contribution.We are grateful to the Biochemistry Society conference organising team, for ensuring that everything proceeded so smoothly. The location and facilities were good. The only criticism of the location would be that, in the evening, everyone dispersed in small groups into Manchester to get dinner, and we didn’t have a focal point for everyone to network in the evening (Figure 1).The conference has become the premier forum for European small G-protein researchers and strongly complements the equivalent Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology (FASEB) series that is held in alternate years in the US. Our audience was largely derived from the UK and Europe who value the accessibility and affordability versus US conference attendance (Figure 1). Due to the current political environment in the US, we lost at least 15 potential attendees from the US who got in touch to explain that their funding and/or travel permissions had been cut or were under threat.