The keynote lecture, "IBD: Light at the End of the Tunnel?" will be delivered by Daniel Podolsky, M.D., professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of the gastrointestinal unit at the affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.

The final panel of the meeting, featuring researchers from the Mayo Clinic, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, University of Barcelona, Spain, and University of Bologna, Italy, will describe new therapeutic strategies in the treatment of IBD.

In addition to evening sessions involving research poster presentations, the meeting will feature symposia led by noted researchers on the following subjects:

• Genetics of IBD
• Role of the immune system in intestinal inflammation: Who are the players and what do they do?
• Innate immune responses in IBD: Role of the vasculature
• Cytokines, chemokines and mediators of chronic inflammation
• Bacterial/host interactions in the pathogenesis of IBD
• New therapeutic strategies in the treatment of IBD

According to co-organizers Matthew Grisham, of Louisiana State University, Shreveport and Fabio Cominelli, of the University of Virginia, the IBD conference is the "first in a series of translational, that is, bench to bedside, conferences to be sponsored by APS aimed at bringing together internationally recognized scientists and clinicians as well as promising young investigators" in a variety of physiological subjects.

Speakers and other participants, many of whom will be presenting poster abstracts, come from all over world, and include researchers and students from the graduate through senior research/faculty level.

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Contact: Mayer Resnick
mresnick@the-aps.org
301-634-7209

Stacy Brooks
sbrooks@the-aps.org
301-634-7253

American Physiological Society
22-Jun-2004