The Faculty of Medicine of the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) is hosting the 2026 International Symposium on Translational Research, an event designed to build bridges between basic science and clinical application. The three-day program, held from October 28 to 30, will feature keynote lectures, thematic panels, a poster session, a meme contest and a pitch competition.
Celso Enrique Cortés Romero, director of the Faculty of Medicine, said the gathering is meant to deliver academic benefit and to consolidate ties and collaborations that can improve the daily work of physicians. The symposium is organized around nine thematic areas, including translational oncology, metabolic diseases, immunology and autoimmune diseases, and regenerative medicine and gene therapy. Researchers of recognized standing are scheduled to share the most recent advances in each of these fields over the course of the three days.
The keynote lecture was delivered by Víctor Manuel Castaño Meneses, a researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), who pointed to a lag in the development of new medicines. He noted that roughly four million scientific articles are published each year, about half of them in the medical field, yet the rate of drug patenting has remained essentially unchanged. According to his figures, more than 80 percent of the medicines in use were developed 40 years ago, a gap he presented as the central problem that translational work seeks to address.
Castaño Meneses argued for a stronger push toward translational medicine, a term that emerged in 1990 and has gained momentum in China, although the first related work was carried out in the United States. The concept refers to the process of moving discoveries from the laboratory bench toward patients in a faster and more systematic way. The symposium's format, which combines lectures, panels, student-facing competitions and a pitch session, reflects that aim by giving researchers, clinicians and students a shared space to exchange findings and propose collaborations.
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