ESA News

ESA Newsletter: November 2001

Annual Scientific Meeting 2001

The Annual Scientific Meeting of the ESA was held at Conrad Jupiter's on the Gold Coast from September 9-12. There were many highlights in a full and exciting programme which included 8 plenary lectures, 4 symposia and over 150 free communications. Joint sessions were held with SRB, ADS and ASSO.

Plenary speakers included Prof Ross Coppel who described the future of biomedical science and the role of bioinformatics in interpreting the overwhelming quantity of data now being generated. This talk was immediately followed by Prof Jack Martin, our Harrison Lecturer, who related his involvement over 3 decades in the discovery of PTHrP and the subsequent characterisation of its many biological roles.

These two talks nicely contrasted the different paradigms of directed, hypothesis-driven research and large 'industrial-scale' exploration. Dr Greet van den Berghe discussed endocrinology of critical illness, pointing out that endocrine responses are dependent on the stage of critical illness. In a subsequent symposium, she described a landmark study showing the importance of tight glucose control in ICU patients; this study is sure to have a major impact on clinical management.

Dr John Kanis gave a comprehensive update on the epidemiology of osteoporosis. Despite the tragedy of the World Trade Centre which happened
on the Tuesday night of the meeting, Prof Domenico Accili, our Taft Lecturer, gave a wonderful talk on Wednesday morning on the roles of forkhead transcription factors in the pathogenesis of Type 2 diabetes. Later that day, Dr Bill Schrader spoke about his work on nuclear transcription factors and gave his insights into future roles of orphan nuclear receptors. Symposia on 'Hormones and cancer', 'Insulin action', 'Extracellular matrix' and 'Endocrinology of non-endocrine conditions' were well-attended as was a workshop on pituitary tumours.

Free communications used Powerpoint presentations for the first time at this year's meeting. Although there were some teething problems at times, this is clearly the way of the future. All in all, this year's meeting was enjoyable as well as successful. The social events were all well attended, allowing an opportunity to meet up with colleagues again.

Roll on Adelaide, 2002…
Leon Bach

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