The Kursk State Medical University, I’m the head of the oncology department there.

It is one of the oldest medical institutions in the country. It turns 86 this year.

Today it is a large medical university that has been awarded the Order of the Labour Red Banner.

It has more than 900 employees, more than 4,000 students, and 11 departments, and its student body includes more than 2,000 foreign students from 50 countries.

-Tell me what kinds of studies you are doing at this institute, what kinds of activity...?

In general, the university is engaged in a large number of scientific platforms. I can tell you only about my own scientific platform, oncology.

In oncology we are involved in applied fundamental oncology, we have a laboratory of surgery and oncology where we perform experimental studies on animals, where we study oncogenesis, and where we study the anti-tumour activity of certain drugs and toxicity.

And the clinical studies we perform at our clinical centre - it’s a large regional oncology clinic that was built fairly recently.

It has the modern equipment needed for diagnosis and treatment.

As part of that centre, we have a research centre, where international [unintelligible] research on various medications is performed.

So we physicians in nearly every department conduct our medical activities and our research work in parallel.

The main areas of research are head and neck tumours, thyroid cancer, melanoma, oesophageal cancer, breast cancer, things like that.

-And tell us something that is important to add, we would like to convey to a colleague...

Convey from where?

-Ahhh, from yourself (laughter)

Well, the format of today’s conference is really a plus. We have been discussing a large number of clinical cases.

Leading experts of the world and the region analyse each clinical situation, which is very useful in that the young specialists here have been gaining a lot of experience and will interact more closely and more productively in the future.

Let’s get together more often.