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AEPC 2024 - Congratulations to this year's Young Investigator & Best Abstract Awards winners!

As we are still buzzing on the great success of the AEPC 2024 Porto meeting, we also want to congratulate this year's winners of the AEPC Young Investigator Award & Best Abstract prizes. 

In addition to these AEPC Awards, various working groups have also given out working group-specific prizes, that will be announced separately. 

Below you can find an overview of this year's AEPC prize winners:  

AEPC AND JSPCCS YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD (YIA)

The top ranking abstracts submitted by Juniors are selected during the abstract review process, and are invited for presentation during the Young Investigator Award session. The winners are announced during the networking dinner. All presenters in this session are also invited to present their work at the YIA session during the JSPCCS Annual Meeting in Fukuoka in July.

AEPC winner: Andreas Tulzer (Austria) - Postinterventional fetal aortic regurgitation: good or bad?

JSPCCS winner: Renjie Wang (Japan) - Impaired relaxation in induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes with pathogenic TNNI3 mutation of pediatric restrictive cardiomyopathy

Below are the names of the 6 YIA finalists that took part in this year's Young Investigator Award session:
Yu Matsuo (Japan) - Central venous pressure augmentation against Abdominal compression as a novel marker for cardiovascular load in the Fontan circulation
Makoto Kudo (Japan) - Red blood cell distribution width and Platelet distribution width as novel biomarkers for Fontan hemodynamics and associated end organ damage
Renjie Wang (Japan) - Impaired relaxation in induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes with pathogenic TNNI3 mutation of pediatric restrictive cardiomyopathy
Cristina Raimondo (Italy) - Radiofrequency ablation vs cryoablation of right atrial lateral accessory pathway in pediatric age: acute and mid-term safety and efficacy profile
Irene Cattapan (Italy) - Natural Shear Wave Elastography in Fontan patients: a new tool for non-invasive assessment of diastolic function?
Andreas Tulzer (Austria) - Postinterventional fetal aortic regurgitation: good or bad?

BEST ABSTRACT AWARDS

All presentations were reviewed & scored during the meeting, and winners were selected based upon their scores received during presentation.

Below you can find the winners of the awards in our three categories Best Oral, Best Moderated Poster & Best Poster. These award winners were announced during the closing ceremony of AEPC 2024 Porto.

BEST ORAL

1. Anna Theresa Pfaller (Germany/Austria) - Pioglitazone and its R-enantiomer prevent disease in a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mouse model
2. Alexander James Fletcher (UK) - Identifying high-risk thoracic aortopathy using positron emission tomography: the AoRTAS study
3. Emmanouil Mavrogiannis (Netherlands) - Inflammasomme in experimental pulmonary arterial hypertension, a natural history study

BEST MODERATED POSTER 

1. Simon D'hulst (Belgium) - Pulse wave velocity predicts future aortic dissection in patients with Marfan syndrome
2. Eike Philipp Schneider (Germany) - Does intraventricular enzyme replacement therapy (ICV-ERT) with Cerliponase alfa affect cardiac function in patients with CLN2 disease?
3. Joyce Su Ling Lim (UK) - Long Term Survival of Antenatally Diagnosed Functionally Single Ventricle Congenital Heart Disease

BEST POSTER

1. Malenka M. Bissell (UK) - Fetal 4D Flow CMR improves prediction for a restricted inter-atrial septum in transposition of the great arteries
2. Luisa Heneka (Germany) - Long-term outcome and risk factors for morbidity and mortality in Ebstein's anomaly: A comprehensive study of 398 cases over half a century
3. Riitta Turunen (Finland) - The role of maternal diabetes and overweight in the morbidity of children with congenital heart defects

In addition, during the AEPC Junior session a quiz was held, where 2 registrations to AEPC 2025 Hamburg were given out as prizes. Kernfan Puthikitawiwong (Thailand) & Isabel Sampaio Graca (Portugal) were the 2 juniors who won free registration for next year's meeting!

We congratulate all the winners with their prizes and hope to see much more of them in future AEPC Annual Meetings!