Havana, Cuba.- The BioHabana 2022 International Congress winds up this Friday with theoretical sessions and, among them, the keynote speech by US doctor James P. Allison, a 2018 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine, related to cancer immunotherapy.

Italian Aldo Venutti, of the Regina Elena National Cancer Institute, whose proposal is entitled “In situ vaccination: the new frontier of immunotherapy for HPV-associated cancer,” is also expected to give a lecture at the Conference Center in Havana today.

The agenda also comprises “The structural basis for T-cell epitope targeting for cancer immunotherapy,” by Karen Anderson, a professor at Arizona State University, US, and “A vaccination approach against the tumor vasculature,” by Arjan Willem Griffioen, of the Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

The Covid-19-related scenario will enable the exchange on the Jusvinza peptide, the Soberana 02 and Soberana Plus vaccines, the vaccine candidate Mambisa (CIGB-669), as well as the administration of the domestically produced SUMA kit to detect the SARS-CoV-2 N protein.

Chronic inflammation and aging, brain diseases, medical technology, bioprocesses and new business models for high-tech sectors also close debates in the morning, while the afternoon session will be for the signing of agreements, and the closing ceremony at 17:00 hours, local time.

The presentation of the trial results with Cuban lung cancer vaccine CIMAvax-EGF, developed by the Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM), and a collaboration research with the Roswell Park Institute in New York, the United States, stood out on Thursday.

Belize’s Prime Minister John Antonio Briceño, after visiting the exhibition area of the Congress, said that there are business opportunities between Cuba and his country.

The Finlay Vaccine Institute, the Adienne company and the Italian Agency for Cultural and Economic Exchange with Cuba signed an agreement on Thursday for the final production of the Covid-19 vaccine Soberana 02 in the transalpine nation.

Around 1,000 delegates from 51 countries are participating in the event, whose opening was attended by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Monday.

Cuba’s Health Minister Jose Angel Portal opened the second day of the event with a keynote speech in which he praised the Government’s efforts that favored the development of medicines and medical devices to fight Covid-19.

Under the slogan “Science for a healthy life,” BioHabana 2022 brought together prominent scientific figures and companies from the biotechnological and pharmaceutical sector of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, El Salvador, Peru, Paraguay and Argentina, among other countries.