18th International Xenopus Conference

The 18th International Xenopus Conference at the European Xenopus Resource Center (EXRC) has been postponed to August 15-19, 2021 at Portsmouth UK.

A message from Matt Guile:

Dear Xenopus Community,

On behalf of the organising committee of IXC 2020 and after talking to the IXB, a decision has been made to postpone the International Xenopus Meeting until 15-19 August 2021. The venue and programme will remain very similar, watch out for updates as the situation resolves. We very much hope that it is possible for those of you who already booked travel to recover the outgoings. We will work at this end to refund any money paid for the conference and accommodation as soon as possible.

For the EXRC, whilst we will no longer have access to the laboratories from this evening, animal care will continue for as long as government restrictions allow (and given it's taken 14 years to build the colony we are even willing to push the boundaries at that point). Matt does have access to the labs so if any resource requirements are absolutely critical it may be possible to get them to you but it will take some time. Thankfully all of the lines tested at F1 in the EXRC are stored as frozen sperm and almost all are also duplicated at NXR so if the worst did happen we should still be OK, although supplies of frogs would be significantly delayed.

I know from calls that some labs have already had to cull their frog stocks due to some countries not including animal technicians on their "movement" lists. We would be really grateful if this has happened to you, that you let us know asap so we can put animals you want from us aside, obviously labs in this situation will be given priority when things get back to normal.

We hope you, your colleagues and families all remain safe,

Matt and the EXRC staff
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Matt Guille
Professor of Developmental Genetics
University of Portsmouth