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2003 Joint Program Committee Report
Experimental Biology 2003
EB 2003 was held in San Diego, CA, April 11 through 15,
2003. All scientific and poster sessions were well-attended and overall
enthusiasm for the meeting was high. EB 2003 featured two unopposed
Techniques and Tech-nology in Physiology Tutori-al/Workshops on Friday and
five “Cross-Sectional” Symposia.
As in past meetings, APS hosted six guest societies:
The Microcirculatory Society, the Biomedical Engineering Society, the
American Federation for Medical Research (AFMR), the Society for
Experimental Biology and Medicine, and the Association of Latin American
Physiological Societies.
Meeting attendance was excellent. Out of a total of
6,496 volunteered abstracts submitted, 2,521 (39%) were programmed by APS.
The total meeting attendance was 12,734. This figure includes 9,800
registered scientists, 1,851 exhibitors, 94 high school students and
teachers, 492 undergraduates and 497 guest and press registrants.
EB 2003 was the fifth year that the meeting was not
organized around scientific themes. Themes were eliminated with the
understanding that some other process could be employed to better facilitate
“inter-Society” programming. However, it should be noted that a number of
sections, cardiovascular (CV) in particular, has brought the issue back to
the table to discuss. Their main concern is that a number of societies
program posters in the area of cardiovascular research; therefore, a
contiguous layout of CV posters on the exhibit hall floor may be more
appealing. The obvious problems are logistics in programming across
societies and different times for poster attendance. This is an issue that
should continue to be discussed. In addition, efforts should continue to
develop cooperative programs among societies. During EB 2003, APS and ASBMB
cooperated to present two symposia on the “NHLBI Programs in Genomic
Applications.” Additionally, APS cosponsored a symposium organized by the
American Society for Nutritional Sciences (ASNS) entitled “Glucagon-like
Peptide 2: Function and Clinical Application.”
EB 2003 marked the eighth Physiology InFocus program.
Organized by the APS President Barbara A. Horwitz, the program topic
“Physiological Implications of Oxidative and Nitrosative Stress” included
four half-day symposia entitled, “General Overview and Disease Relevance,”
“Emerging Concepts in Oxidative and Nitrosative Signal-ing,” “Cardiovascular
Consequences of Oxidative/Nitro-sative Stress,” and “Pulmonary and Endocrine
Con-sequences of Oxidative/Nitrosative Stress.” Attendance was outstanding.
The InFocus program was preceded by a workshop entitled, “Methods to Detect
Oxidative and Nitrosative Stress,” which was organized by Matthew Grisham
and Joey Granger. The Physiology InFocus topic for EB 2004 will be organized
by current President John Williams on the topic of “Large Scale Systems
Biology.”
EB 2003 was the fourth year to introduce two Techniques
and Technology in Physiology Tutorial/Workshops. The first, on oxidative
stress, is indicated above. The other tutorial was entitled, “Frontiers of
in vivo Molecular Imaging: Crossroads Between Physiology and Pathology,” and
was organized by Michael S. Goligorsky and Alan Verkman. In addition, there
were five “Cross-Sectional” Symposia developed to cut across sections: “AT-1
and AT-2 Receptors: Antagonists in Cellular Action?” “Lineage Specific
Programming of Stem Cells into Tissues,” “Mitochondrial Regulation of Cell
Function,” “Neuron- Glia Interactions in Nervous System Function,” and
“Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptors (PPARs).”
Experimental Biology 2004
The Joint Program Committee (JPC) met during EB 2003 to
begin, and again in June to finalize the program of symposia and featured
topics for 2004.
The APS continues to be aware of the importance of
including women and members of underrepresented minorities as well as junior
scientists on the panels of invited speakers. By and large, the sessions
scheduled this year showed this awareness. In addition, through the efforts
of the Liaison with Industry Committee, the JPC understands the importance
of including researchers from industry as speakers on symposia and featured
topics. The Section Program Committees will be advised to remind applicants
of these matters in considering participants for future proposals.
The 2004 Physiology InFocus program will include four
sessions on the topic of Large Scale Systems Biology with sessions
tentatively entitled, “Gene Expression: The Tran-scriptome,” “Proteomics,”
“Large Scale Systems Biology,” and “Applications of Systems Biology in
Physiology and Disease.” Two workshops in the same general research area are
also planned entitled, “The Promised Land or Fatal Attraction? A Practical
Overview of the Present and Future of Genetically Engineered Mice,” and
“Microarrays, Proteomics and Mass Spectrometry.” Four cross-sectional
symposia entitled, “Biological “Applications of Nanotech-nology,” “The
Heme-Heme Oxygenase-Carbon Monoxide System and the Control of Cardiovascular
and Renal Function,” “The Mechanisms and Impact of Fetal Physio-logical
Programming,” and “Intracellular Trafficking of Membrane Proteins in Renal
Epithelia,” and two Transla-tional Research symposia entitled, “Use of Mouse
Models to Understand the Pathophysiology of Diabetes: Implications for
Preventing Complications,” and “Sympathetic-Adrener-gic and Baroreflex
Function with Aging,” are also planned.
The 2003 meeting saw the implementation of the “meeting
within a meeting” scheme on the general topic of Oxidative Stress. The 2004
meeting will expand on this to include “meetings within the meeting” on
Aging, Diabetes, Stem Cells, Ion Channels, Oxidative Stress, Vascular
Regulation and Intracellular Trafficking. These “themes” will be used for
advertising the meeting. Moreover, we used these thematic areas to program
the meeting, and guest societies, in particular, such as AFMR were very
enthusiastic and also participated in our thematic program. As in past
years, rooms and times were first selected for the lectures and InFocus
sessions. Then, we programmed symposia and feature topics around these
themes to ensure that an attendee wanting to see each session in a theme can
do so without conflict. Unfortunately, we were unable to keep each theme in
a specific room throughout the meeting as rooms of some sizes are in high
demand. Finally, sections completed their programs in the remaining space.
A special program at EB 2004 will remember Arthur
Guyton. This program, organized by Joey Granger, is entitled, “Arthur C.
Guyton: The Man and His Science,” and will feature John Hall, Allen Cowley,
L. Gabriel Navar, and Harris Granger as speakers.
The 2004 Henry Pickering Bowditch Award lecture will be
presented by Robin Davisson from the University of Iowa; the Walter B.
Cannon Memorial Award lecture will be presented by Christine Seidman of the
Harvard Medical School. The Walter C. Randall lecturer is not yet
determined.
APS Conferences
By and large, this program, which was initiated in
1991, has been very successful and is improving. The Society is striving for
a goal in which the vast majority of scientists will consider APS
Conferences a premier meeting to attend. APS Council would like to increase
the number of APS Conferences from two to four per year. The additional two
conferences are to be organized on Physiological Genomics and Physiology and
Medicine: Translational Research. The first Physiological Genomics
conference was held in 2002 while the first Translational Research
conference will be held in 2004. The APS Program Committee is soliciting
ideas for future APS conferences in these two areas as well as other timely
topics. One proposal on Phosphoinositides was evaluated but was not
recommended for funding.
Scheduled APS Conferences include:
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2003 APS Conference, September 19-14, Banff, Alberta,
Canada, “Adrenal Steroid Hormone and Control of Extracellular Fluids: from
Genetics to Physiology” organized by Daniela Rotin and Douglas Eaton.
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2003 APS Physiological Genomics Conference, October
1-4, Augusta, GA “Understanding Renal and Cardiovascular Function through
Physiological Function” organized by David Pollock, Jennifer Pollock,
Elizabeth Nabel, Clinton Webb, and Josephine Briggs.
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2004 APS Translational Research Conference, September
8-11, Snowmass, CO “Immunological and Pathophysiological Mechanisms in
Inflammatory Bowel Disease”, organized by Matthew Grisham and Fabio
Cominelli.
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2004 APS Intersociety Meeting, October 6-9, Austin,
TX, “Integrative Biology of Exercise”, organized by Ronald Terjung,
Chair.
Curt D. Sigmund, Chair
Council Actions
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