Post-Conference Week 2025

Now spanning five days in May, the conference week featured a full programme of workshops, strategic meetings, and scientific sessions.

We remain incredibly grateful to the Irish ME Trust , who once again supported the IIMEC17 conference. Their valued partnership continues, having sponsored every conference since 2006.

The conference week events are otherwise self-funded by the charity. This makes it challenging each year to grow and improve the conference while continuing to prioritise new research, fresh ideas, and international cooperation.

Yet this independence enables us to stay focused on innovation and meaningful collaboration.
As always, we work with what we have—proving it’s not what you have, but what you do with it that counts.

A key charity objective is developing and supporting European research through both the European ME Research Group (EMERG) and Young EMERG. This continued strategy is vital—especially as we strive to attract researchers from other fields and build long-term investment in ME science. Our goal remains clear: to fund and facilitate the kind of research that offers the best chance of advancing understanding and treatment for ME. This year’s event series was arguably our best yet—filled with energy, innovation, and new voices entering the field. Informal post-event dinners helped spark further conversations and collaboration among researchers, clinicians, and patient representatives. Both the colloquium and the conference received full CPD accreditation from the Royal Colleges, reaffirming the educational and professional standard of the week.

The week opened with the fifth Early Career Researcher (ECR) workshop: now a two-day Young EMERG SPARK ME event that brought together over 50 in-person attendees and 10 more online, from Europe, North America, Australia, and South Africa.

This workshop gave early-career researchers practical training in areas such as networking, funding applications, and presenting research. Just as importantly, it created connections between newer and established researchers, helping to build a resilient and sustainable research community for the future. The Young EMERG team should be justly proud of the environment they have created.

Before the main scientific sessions, members of the European ME Research Group met to explore a potential EU Horizon funding bid and held discussions with the NIH about clinical trial standards (Hinxton Criteria).
These strategic conversations underline the charity’s commitment to aligning research with the real-world needs of the ME community and supporting rigorous international standards.
More will be shared in due course—but the progress so far is very promising.

The 14th Biomedical Research into ME Colloquium (BRMEC14) was widely seen as the most successful yet. It featured in-depth discussion and practical outcomes that led to new collaborative research efforts.

This year’s theme—systems biology—emphasised a holistic approach that studies how genetic, molecular, and environmental factors interact in ME. This is essential given the illness’s complexity and diversity of symptoms.

Key discussion areas included:

• Systems Biology and AI: Using powerful computational tools to uncover patterns in large datasets, with implications for new treatment pathways.
• Genomics: Continuing research into the genetic factors associated with ME.
• Molecular Biology: Investigating altered proteins, immune function, and existing drugs that might help ME patients.
• Chronic Infection and Long COVID: Crossovers between ME and Long COVID offer new opportunities for subtyping and treatment.
• Neuroinflammation: How inflammation in the nervous system contributes to ME symptoms.
• Immune Function and Exercise: Exploring how exercise impacts the immune system and contributes to post-exertional malaise.
• Autonomic Physiology: Examining dysfunctions in blood flow and heart rate regulation, which affect ME patients.
• Metabolomics: Tracking subtle changes in the body’s chemical processes.
• In Vitro and In Silico Models: Lab-based and computer models that allow research even when patient samples are limited.

The conference week culminated in the IIMEC17 Conference, where global experts shared their latest research findings. Like the colloquium, the conference was fully CPD-accredited by the Royal Colleges.

Highlights included a panel session chaired by a consultant newly introduced to the ME field, showcasing experienced clinical voices and promoting open discussion.

Post-event dinners gave everyone—from speakers to patient advocates—a chance to continue those important conversations in a relaxed setting.

Video recordings of the IIMEC17 presentations will soon be freely available on our website: 👉 https://www.investinme.org/IIMEC17

The 2025 International ME Conference Week demonstrated our sustained commitment to fund and facilitate a strategy of high quality, collaborative research. By bringing together a global community, supporting early-career researchers, and maintaining a focus on innovation, we are trying to make meaningful progress towards understanding and treating ME.
The charity remains committed to building on nearly two decades of dedicated effort and looking forward to a future of continued advancement for the ME community.

Our thanks to all of the speakers and delegates for making this a worthwhile week that we hope will result in multiple new projects over the next year.

Plans are already underway for the 2026 events, set to take place from 25–29 May 2026, which will also mark 20 years of Invest in ME Research—a remarkable achievement made possible by our supporters.

As part of the ongoing development of the Young EMERG network, additional workshops are being planned across Europe.

In addition to the two-day Young EMERG Workshop at the start of the 2026 Conference Week in the UK, there are plans for a Young EMERG workshop in Vienna in November 2025, and also discussions for a summer 2026 event in the Netherlands, and a possible 2026 autumn workshop in Valencia.
These initiatives aim to strengthen the Young EMERG network, foster collaboration among European early-career researchers, and build lasting links with international colleagues.

The 2025 International ME Conference Week showed once again that real progress is possible—with the right people, the right focus, and a shared commitment to excellence. We are grateful to all participants who made the week so rewarding and look forward to seeing the projects that grow from these connections in the year ahead.

We end with the comments of a speaker whom we invited to the conference week, new to the ME field: