HYDERABAD: The Board of Genetic Counseling concluded its eighth annual international conference in collaboration with the University of Hyderabad (UoH). The conference took place in a hybrid format at the university’s school of life sciences, attracting 411 attendees in person and over 150 participants online.
During his address, Padma Shri awardee Professor RNK Bamezai, an expert in the field of human genetics and cancer biology, highlighted the genetic, phenotypic and allelic diversity that contributes to wide heterogeneity.
He emphasised the need for genetic counsellors to adopt an individualised approach to assess genetic disorders and provide optimal management for patients and their families.
The conference received nearly 100 abstracts with e-posters, out of which six were selected for prize distribution in three different categories. Before the conference, two pre-conference workshops were conducted. One was a hybrid workshop focusing on teaching and training core skills of genetic counselling, while the other was an in-person workshop exclusively on next-generation sequencing and bioinformatics for clinical practice.
The conference comprised of eight scientific sessions, featuring presentations from 14 international and 52 national expert faculty members with diverse expertise. The conference also welcomed participation from several diagnostic companies operating in the field of genomics.
Vice-Chancellor Prof BJ Rao encouraged the board to collaborate with the UoH faculty to develop academic, teaching, training and research programmes that would advance the genetic counselling profession in India.