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Gastrointestinal/Liver Section Newsletter
Spring 2003

SECTION ANNOUNCEMENTS

Official Name Change of the Section

By an overwhelming margin, members voted to officially change the name of our section to the Gastrointestinal and Liver Section. We are all very proud of our new name and hope it will promote even more participation by liver biologists/physiologists and hepatologists from around the world.

New Members of Steering Committee

There are several changes in the membership of the section steering committee. We welcome Dr Pamela Horby as our Liason with Industry Committee member. Dr Hornby is a Senior Research Fellow and Team Leader of the Enterology Biology Section at Johnson and Johnson Research. In addition, we have added Dr Christie Cefaratti as our Trainee Member to our committee. Dr Cefaratti is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. We are pleased to have our first Trainee Member. Drs Raybould, Bunnett and Samuelson are actively involved in identifying candidates for election to the GI/Liver Section to replace our outgoing members. We are also in the process of identifying a candidate to fill our recently vacated representative to the Committee on Committees
 

EXPERIMENTAL BIOLOGY 2003
April 11-15 2003, San Diego, CA

Gastrointestinal/Liver Programming at EB 2003

Chris Cheeseman and the Programming Committee has done a great job of organizing our Section Symposium and Featured Topics. Here is a listing of the GI/Liver Section Program for EB 2003:

EB 2003

Symposium  Saturday, April 12^th  3:15-5:15 pm

Recent advances in the study of intestinal hexose transport proteins.

Chaired by Ron Ferraris and Chris Cheeseman.

Speakers:

            Ernest Wright, UCLA.    SGLT proteins.

George Kellett, Univ. of York, UK.Trafficking of GLUT2 into the BBM.

            Ron Ferraris. New Jersey Medical School.   Control of fructose abosrption.

Edith Brot-Laroche, (France)  Hexose transport in intestinal GLUT2^-/- mice.

Chris Cheeseman, Univ. of Alberta, Canada.  Putative new GLUT isoforms in the small intestine.

Featured Topic number 1.   Saturday, April 12^th,   8:00-10:00 am.

New Insights on neuro-immune interaction in autonomic regulation

Chaired by Yvette Tache, (Abbott Award winner)

Speakers:

            Paul Sawchenko, Clayton Foundation Laboratories for Peptide Research,

            The Salk Institute. 

            Title: Circuits and mechanisms underlying immune influences on HPA and other acute phase responses.

            Gerlinda Hermann, Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

            Title: Tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF) and the brainstem regulation of gastric function.

Featured Topic number 2.    Tuesday, April 15^th,  8:00-10:00 am.

Trafficking of Membrane Transporters in the GI Tract and Beyond.

Chairs:  John Forte and Chris Okamoto

Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Dennis Brown, Massachusetts General Hospital, Dept of Medicine,     Renal Unit.

Other speakers to be announced.

Featured Topic number 3.   Sunday, April 13^th,  8:00-10:00 am. (Abstract driven)

Parietal Cell Club

Curtis Okamoto is chairing this year's Parietal Cell Club meeting, to be held at Experimental Biology 2003.  The meeting will be held on Sunday evening, April 13, 5:00-7:30 p.m., at the Torrance Room of the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina. Curtis has done a great job of putting together an all-Nippon Parietal Cell Club.  The featured speakers are Dr. Tetsuro Urushidani from the University of Tokyo and Dr. Shinji Asano from Toyama Medical and Pharmaceutical University.  Dr. Urushidani's talk is entitled, "80K and 120K - Past, Present, and Future", and Dr. Asano's talk is entitled, "Behavior of gastric proton pump in the stable cell lines."  As usual, you can look forward to an evening of uninhibited, stimulating discussion and debate, likely to be further enhanced by the beverages and hors d'ouevre to be provided.  We hope to see you there!

GI Section Predoctoral Student Prize: We received 7 applications for our predoctoral award this year. Kala M Kaspar from the University of Wisconsin was awarded this year’s Predoctoral Student Prize.

GI Section Postdoctoral Student Prize: Applications were received from 9 postdoctoral fellows.  Dr. Jay Thiagarajah from UCSF was chosen as this years Awardee.

The Gastrointestinal Section Young Investigator Award: We received 6 applications for this award and although we had three awards to give out, the steering committee decided that only two candidates were deserving of the award.  The awards went to Dr Robert Brock, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Arkansas and Dr Bryan Mackensie of the Membrane Biology Program at the Brigham and Womens Hosptial in Boston.

Abbott Distinguished Research Award for Excellence in Gastrointestinal Physiology: This will awarded to Yvette Tache, PhD, Professor of Medicine at UCLA VA.  Dr Tache is well known for her research into the area of brain-gut interactions. Dr Tache will present her lecture entitled “Neuropeptides at play in Brain-Gut Interactions: Pathophysiological Implications” at our annual business meeting/reception at 6:30 pm on April 14 in the Las Palmas room of the Marriott hotel. Be there for a great time!

Horace W. Davenport Distinguished Lecturship: This will be awarded to Dr Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University in St. Louis. Dr Gordon is an internationally recognized expert in field of GI development and GI/microbial interactions. Dr Gordon will present his lecture at 2 pm on April 13 in room 5 of the Convention Center.

All of the awardees will be honored at the section social/business meeting at EB.

Distinguished Lectureship Trainee Lunch

An email has been sent to the corresponding author on every abstract submitted under section descriptors to invite trainees to attend this event.  We look forward to a very interesting lunch with Dr Gordon at 11:45am on April 13 in the Santo Rosa room of the Marriott Hotel. 

GI Section Steering Committee: 2002-2003