Meeting Recap: NIRO Annual Meeting 2025

The first keynote speaker, Dirk de Ruysscher (Maastricht University Medical Center), delivered a compelling session on the complexity of combining radiotherapy and immunotherapy in non-small cell lung cancer – emphasizing that while radiation can enhance immune responses, achieving the optimal scheduling, volumes and interaction patterns remains far from straightforward. Following his talk, the “flash poster” slot and the poster session allowed participants to present emerging work, mingle over coffee, and spark informal discussions. This created good opportunities for collaboration prospects and meeting new colleagues across institutions and disciplines. Later in the morning, updates on Norway’s national proton-therapy initiative were presented, including insights from the first six months of the new proton-therapy facility at Oslo University Hospital. After lunch, the second keynote by Martin Pruschy (University of Zurich) addressed “temporally and spatially separated radiotherapy at the preclinical level,” exploring how variations in dose distribution and time structure might influence tumor- and immune-responses. The afternoon sessions delved into imaging, biological responses and radiosensitiation – covering topics from the impact of smoking on radiotherapy outcomes to deep immune-profiling of patients receiving combined chemoradiotherapy and immunotherapy. Overall, the meeting offered a blend of translational science, clinical updates and pre-clinical innovation – with strong engagement from participants, valuable discussions throughout, and poster sessions and coffee breaks providing an arena for networking.

Thank you to everyone who attended, and we hope to see you again at the next NIRO meeting!