More than 230 researchers and students gathered at the new CRCHUM Agora last February 5 for the tenth MDRC annual retreat. The meeting started with the 3rd George Cahill Lecture given by Dr Dan Drucker from Mount Sinai Hospital of Toronto and entitled “Redefining classical concepts of incretin hormone action”. Three students then presented their work – Denis Blondin (from André Carpentier laboratory) was awarded for best oral presentation – and Dr Ron Kahn gave the 11th J Denis McGarry Lecture entitled “Interactions between genes, environment and the gut microbiome in insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome”.

In the afternoon, 69 posters were presented and prizes were awarded for best presentation to: Erin Coyne (S Wing lab, McGill), Sophie Gravel (V Michaud lab, CRCHUM/UdM), Khalil Bouyakdan (T Alquier lab, CRCHUM/UdM), Nida Haider (L Larose lab, McGill), Liliia Butiaeva (M Kokoeva lab, McGill), Hicham Mahboubi (U Stochaj lab, McGill), Cindy Audiger (S Lesage lab, HMR), Léa Décarie-Spain (Fulton/Alquier lab, CRCHUM/UdM), Blandine Secco (M Laplante lab, U Laval) and Hasna Maachi (V Poitout lab, CRCHUM/UdM). Congratulations to all the students for their excellent work and presentations.

Three seminars ended the day, given by Sylvie Lesage from Hôpital Maisonneuve-Rosemont, Frédéric Picard from Université Laval and Inès Holzbaur form Amorchem. Day highlights can be seen on MDRC twitter account @MDRC_CRDM.

This tenth MDRC Retreat was supported by Merck, Lilly, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Janssen, Boehringer, Takeda, Pfizer, McGill, Diabète Québec, CMDO, IRCM and CRCHUM.