Krisztina Gecse © ECCO

It was our pleasure to welcome three new members, Laurent Beaugerie, Peter Bossuyt and Shaji Sebastian, onto the Clinical Research Committee of ECCO at the ECCO’19 Copenhagen Congress.

Sebastian Zeissig © ECCO

Mechanisms and therapeutic modulation of mucosal healing in IBD 

We saw one of the best-ever attended SciCom Workshops this year, with exciting talks and highly interactive discussions around the topic of mucosal healing in IBD. In two sessions, the mechanisms of intestinal regeneration and its disruption in IBD and novel approaches to the clinical assessment and therapeutic modulation of mucosal healing were discussed.

Janneke van der Woude © ECCO

One of the main goals of ECCO is to promote IBD-related basic and clinical research as well as to foster interaction and productive collaboration among European research groups working in the IBD field.

To achieve this goal, ECCO continues to award Grants, Fellowships and Travel Awards, and the number of awardees has now increased to an amazing total of more than 25.  

Another record number of abstracts has been submitted for the 14^th Congress of ECCO. Out of 1,222 submitted scientific abstracts, 1,012 abstracts have been accepted.

Of these abstracts, 38 have been selected as Oral Presentations during the Scientific Programme and another 90 were selected as Digital Oral Presentations. ECCO Committee Members reviewed each of these presentations to select the winners of the Top 10 DOPs, IIS Abstract Awards, and the Y-ECCO Abstract Awards.

8,034 delegates attended the 14th Congress of ECCO in Copenhagen

The 14^th Congress of ECCO – Inflammatory Bowel Diseases 2019, held on March 6-9, 2019 in Copenhagen, Denmark, attracted a total number of 8,034 delegates from 98 different countries. Since the inaugural ECCO Congress in 2006 in Amsterdam, at which there were 350 delegates, participant numbers have steadily increased, as shown in the graph below:

ECCO Congress participation 2006-2019 © ECCO

Willem Bemelman  © ECCO

Nuha Yassin  © ECCO

Ignacio Catalán-Serra © Ignacio Catalán-Serra

ECCO’19 Copenhagen welcomed the record number of participants – 8034 – by offering the three-day Scientific Programme “Research drives clinical care”, 16 educational courses, and a poster exhibition of 860 hard copy posters, as well as a platform for 45 exhibitors and for innumerable business meetings.

One of these meetings also brought the new ECCO News Editors team together in order to plan for the publication year 2019.

Nuha Yassin  © ECCO

Ignacio Catalán-Serra © Ignacio Catalán-Serra

Nuha and Ignacio have been recently appointed as the new ECCO News Associate Editors and will be working with the ECCO Office as well as the General Secretary (Willem Bemelman) to bring you new format and content to ECCO News. This will start with this first issue of the year providing you with a summary of the oral presentations given at the recent ECCO 2019 Congress in Copenhagen. 

Nuha and Ignacio would welcome your ideas on what you would like to read on ECCO News and would appreciate it if you could either contact them directly or email the ECCO Office with your suggestions.

Silvio Danese © ECCO

Dear ECCO Family,

I want to personally thank everyone who attended the ECCO Congress in Copenhagen.  ECCO 2019 can proudly be defined as the biggest IBD meeting in the world. I am very happy about the increasing number of participants, which this year totalled 8034 from 98 countries. ECCO 2019 once again offered top science, with 144 abstracts presented and 1012 abstracts accepted. And obviously, a special thank you is due to all the invited speakers for their outstanding presentations and to the ECCO Committee Members for ensuring the success of the meeting.

Wolfgang Eigner

Dear Friends and Colleagues!

It is with regret and great sadness that we announce the sudden passing of our dear colleague and friend Dr. Wolfgang Eigner in his early thirties.

Igor Khalif

Dear Friends and Colleagues!

February 18, 2019, Russian IBD Study society and the entire medical community of Russia suffered an irreparable loss. Professor Igor Khalif, Head of the Department of inflammatory and functional bowel diseases of Russian State Center of Coloproctology died after a serious illness. It is a great grief and a huge pain not only for his family and friends, but for all his colleagues and like-minded people, not only in Russia, but abroad.