CanHepC held its Annual Meeting and 14th Canadian Symposium on Hepatitis C Virus in Québec City on February 27th and 28th, 2025.
The CanHepC Annual Meeting and Symposium are annual highlights for the network. Over two days, members and invited guests were engaged in discussions about the network's research, training program and future direction as well as hearing presentations about advances in HCV research, programs and practices. These events showcase the incredible strength of the network and its impact within Canada and globally.
CanHepC’s Annual Meeting is a one-day gathering that convenes all our member investigators, knowledge users, student trainees, collaborators, and guests, as well as members of our International Advisory Board. This year, 75 people attended the meeting.
The Annual Meeting program included updates from each of the network's research areas, themes and cross-cutting platforms including the Training, Education and Mentorship program. The meeting also included a two-part discussion about the network's future direction and renewal in 2026-2027. Part one focussed on future reseach priorities and possible new collaborations for the network. We thank Jennifer van Gennip for her presentation on community perspectives on research priorities from Action Hepatitis Canada. We also thank Nashira Popovic, who presented an overview of CTN+, and Angela Crawley and Curtis Cooper, who presented an overview of CanHepB. Part two of the future direction discussion focussed on priorities for each of the cross-cutting platforms and the training program. The day ended with a review of the network's current financial status and other internal operational matters. A complete report of the day is available to our members in the intranet.
The 14th Canadian Symposium on Hepatitis C Virus (CSHCV), part of the joint Canadian Digestive Diseases Week & Canadian Liver Meeting, was chaired by Guillaume Fontaine and Marie-Louise Vachon. Under the theme “From Research Breakthroughs to Equitable Healthcare for Priority Populations” the CSHCV featured presentations and plenaries on emerging hepatitis C virus research, programs and practices in 3 sessions: Biomedical Reserach, Clinical Research, and Population Health & Health Services Research.
Invited speakers included Drs Thomas Pietschmann (Challenges in HCV vaccine design), Seun O. Falade-Nwulia (Evaluating varying strategies to address disparities in HCV care access & uptake) and Mike Wilson (Strengthening evidence-support systems to inform policy decision-making) and many of our CanHepC Investigators.
In addition to the invited speakers and oral presentations from the abstract pool, we hosted a panel on 'Women and HCV', moderated by Madison Kennedy from CATIE. Panelists included women with lived/living experience with HepatitisC, as well as healthcare providers in this area. We thank all our participants for sharing their stories with us, offering a reminder to the importance of this work.
We also thank Drs John Ward, Andrea Cox, Stanislas Pol, and Peter Vickerman for their insights as international advisors.
Congratulations to the following student recipients of CanHepC Awards:
- Best Oral Presentation:
- Samaa Gobran, Centre de Recherche du CHUM
- Best MSc Student poster:
- Chelsea Masterman, Western University
- Best PhD Student posters:
- Sasha Udhesister, Centre de Recherche du CHUM
- Simmone D'Souza, University of Calgary
- Best Postdoc Student Poster
- Yasmin Saeed, University of Waterloo
The next CanHepC Annual Meeting and 15th CSHCV will take place on February 26-27th, 2026 in Toronto. Mark your calendars!
