Thirty years ago, a film entitled "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" starred John Travolta as a child stricken with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (SCID) who lived in a plastic enclosure until his death. Until recently, a newborn diagnosed with SCID would not survive to his or her first birthday. Today, clinical diagnosis and treatment advances in PI have cured certain of the "Bubble Boy" diseases as well as other PI disorders.

To highlight the latest advances in the treatment of Primary Immunodeficiencies (PI), a group of life threatening disorders that afflict millions of people in the U.S. and around the world, the Jeffrey Modell Foundation (JMF) and the New York Academy of Sciences is cosponsoring a one-day conference, Primary Immunodeficiencies: Past, Present, Future, on April 25 at Rockefeller University from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Thirty of the world's leading immunology investigators will present their latest findings and more than 350 scientists and physicians are expected to attend.

Consisting of four plenary sessions, the symposium will provide an overview of PI and detail the immense progress that has been made within the last 20 years in this field. Advances include the high success rate for bone marrow transplantation for unrelated, matched donors, as well as newborn screening for SCID and treatments derived from gene therapy. In addition, researchers are optimistic that stem cell research may yield new treatments in the future. The conference coincides with the 20 year anniversary of the Jeffrey Modell Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to PI research, physician education and patient support.

"In the last twenty years, there has been an amazing number of scientific breakthroughs," said Fred Modell, co-founder of the Jeffrey Modell Foundation. "For example, it is now possible to have an over 90 percent success rate in bone marrow transplantation, which would have been unthinkable two decades ago. We'v
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Contact: Jennifer Tang
jtang@nyas.org
212-838-0230
New York Academy of Sciences
12-Apr-2006

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