Workshops and Conferences Organized by NICHD Intramural Research Program Staff in 2008
Irwin Arias organized, chaired, and participated in the 18th Annual Irwin M. Arias MD Symposium entitled “Bridging Basic Science and Liver Disease,” sponsored by the American Liver Foundation. The one-day symposium was held in Boston on October 29, 2008. The Arias symposia are educational programs that focus on applying advances in basic science to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of liver disease. Dr. Arias also organized, directed, and participated in the 7th Annual NIH Course on “Demystifying Medicine for PhD Students, Fellows and Staff,” held weekly from January to May at NIH. The professionally prepared and distributed course is used as a major teaching aid worldwide in over 20 institutions.
NICHD, in conjunction with the Office of Rare Diseases, supported the XIII International Adrenal Conference, which was organized by Maria Dufau, NICHD; Bernard Schimmer, University of Toronto; and Alexander C. Brownie, University of Buffalo. The meeting, held in San Francisco from June 11 through 14, drew 101 participants, including several trainees and young scientists at the beginning of their independent careers, who benefited from discussing their work with expert and seasoned scientists. The meeting brought together many of the leading research groups from the United States and abroad and featured presentations by prominent investigators describing new and important developments in basic and clinical research on the adrenal cortex. Topics included rare genetic disorders that affect adrenal steroidogenesis and other endocrine and non-endocrine functions as well as familial glucocorticoid deficiency, congenital lipoid adrenal hyperplasia, adrenocortical carcinoma, and adrenal insufficiency (P450 oxidoreductase deficiency, cortisone reductase deficiency, and congenital adrenal hyperplasia). Speakers provided new insights into the role of adrenal stem cells in the differentiation and development of the adrenal cortex and the transcriptional regulation of adreno-primordia development. Others described post-transcriptional modifications that modulate the activity of Ad4BP/SF1, a member of the nuclear receptor family that regulates genes essential for steroidogenesis. Researchers also described new mechanisms for tissue-specific actions of glucorticoids resulting from multiple receptor isoforms.
Alan Hinnebusch is co-organizer of the recurring Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Meeting on Translational Control, which this year was held in September 2008 at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. He was also co-organizer of the Keystone Symposium on Translational Regulatory Mechanisms held in January, 2008, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
The XVII International AIDS Conference, Mexico City, August 2008, was the central event of the year in the field of HIV/AIDS research, prevention, and treatment. The meeting attracted more than 22,000 delegates from around the world. Within the framework of the meeting, the International AIDS Society invited Leonid Margolis to organize and chair a special session entitled “War and Peace between Microbes: Co-pathogens as Determinants of HIV.” During the session, scientists from the United States, Brazil, India, and Peru presented new data on co-pathogens’ interactions with HIV and discussed the possibility of preventing or containing HIV infection with the help of such interactions. The 17th Annual International Conference on AIDS, Cancer and Public Health took place in St. Petersburg (Russia) in May 2008. The conference always attracts many internationally acclaimed scientists from the United States and Europe. As before, the organizers invited Dr. Margolis to organize and chair a mini-symposium on “Microbicides/Local Immunity,” at which scientists from the United States, Holland, and Belgium presented their latest data and theoretical considerations on how to prevent local HIV transmission.
The proceedings of an NICHD Workshop held in Potomac, Maryland, in October 2007, were published in 2008 in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences as volume 1135, entitled “The Menstrual Cycle and Adolescent Health” and edited by Catherine M. Gordon, Corrine Welt, Robert W. Rebar, Paula J.A. Hillard, Martin M. Matzuk, and Lawrence M. Nelson. Sponsors of the two-day symposium included the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the NICHD, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the NIH Office of Research on Women’s Health, the NIH Office of Rare Diseases, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Office of Women’s Health, the DHHS Office of Women’s Health, and Rachel’s Well, Inc. Patients, patient advocates, and experts from a variety of fields and disciplines attended the workshop, which identified areas for which the scarcity of data hampers the issuance of evidence-based recommendations for the management of menstrual problems in young adolescents. Accordingly, participants developed a manifesto on research on the menstrual cycle in adolescents, emphasizing the need for (1) a new research model that integrates grass-roots community passion for participatory research with research planning and regulatory oversight and (2) a coordinated research effort on the menstrual cycle and its disorders in adolescents. The effort could initially take the form of a Study of Puberty Across the Nation (SPAN), similar to the Study of Women Across the Nation (SWAN), which addressed the normal menopausal process.
In line with the spirit of his program, which emphasizes teamwork, collaboration with outside medical centers, and patient participation, Karel Pacak helped organize the Second International Symposium on Pheochromocytoma held in Cambridge, UK, in September 2008. The symposium provided an international forum for over 150 investigators and health care professionals from around the world, all with a common interest in pheochromocytoma. The symposium facilitated the forging of new and improved collaborations, interdisciplinary studies, and concerted, comprehensive approaches to resolving the outstanding scientific and medical problems associated with pheochromocytoma.
Yun-Bo Shi, together with Zahra Zakeri (Queens College, CUNY), Richard Lockshin (St. Johns University, New York), Junying Yuan (Harvard Medical School, Boston), Jiarui Wu (Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, China), and Dengxi Zheng (Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, China), organized The Seventh International Cell Death Society Symposium on targeting cell death pathways for human diseases. Held in Shanghai in June 2008, the meeting covered most of the important topics in current cell death research, including genetic control of programmed cell death, cell death in the immune system, autophagy, cell-death pathways and their regulation, and cell death in disease and therapeutics.