Category: Meetings/Events

Most of us—whether we’re making discoveries or funding them—spend our time focused on driving science forward. Occasionally we have the opportunity to revel in the advances that have been made and see firsthand how they change lives. That’s what happened here at NIH a few weekends ago, and it was an absolute delight.

FasterCures and the Milken Institute organized A Celebration of Science, a 3-day event in the Washington, D.C., area to reaffirm the importance of biomedical research. It brought together more than 1,000 scientists, patients, policymakers, businesspeople, artists and others who have made discoveries in, have been affected by or simply wanted to know more about biomedical research. The group came to NIH on a Saturday to hear about cutting-edge research, people whose lives have changed for the better because of biomedical advances, and the economic impacts of NIH investments.

Research funded by NIGMS was featured in a presentation by Susan Lindquist of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, who talked about her work related to protein folding and misfolding. Although introducing these concepts to a mostly nonscientific audience was no easy task, she had the audience roaring with laughter when she showed protein folding in a test tube as a few synchronized swimmers in an Olympic-sized pool and then protein folding in a real cell interior as a crowded wave pool in Tokyo . . . on a VERY hot day. Her presentation also highlighted two features common among NIGMS’ basic research portfolios:

• Using model organisms (in her case, yeast) to make discoveries about quite complex human diseases, and
• Finding that the same fundamental cellular processes work (or don’t work) in diseases we think of as very different (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease and cancer).

These are just a few highlights of the exciting and inspiring day at NIH. For more, watch this 10-minute overview or the entire NIH morning session and afternoon session.

We welcome structural biologists and biologists engaged in functional investigations that benefit from structural data to participate in our PSI:Biology Technologies Workshop at NIH on December 12, 2012.

The workshop will focus on new technologies for high-throughput protein structure determination developed within our Protein Structure Initiative, which is now in a phase called PSI:Biology. Investigators from the initiative will present their latest data and highlight problems and solutions specifically related to protein-protein, protein-ligand, protein-nucleic acid and other macromolecular complexes. In addition to exchanging ideas, workshop participants will have the opportunity to meet potential collaborators.

This meeting is the latest in a series of popular and very productive annual events, dubbed “bottlenecks” and “enabling technologies” workshops. Registration (no longer available), which is now open, is free. If you have questions, especially as we build the agenda, or require any other assistance, please e-mail me or Alexandra Ainsztein or call us at 301-594-4428 or 301-594-0828, respectively.

One of our 50th anniversary scientific society symposia took place last month at the American Chemical Society (ACS) national meeting  in Philadelphia. The day-long event highlighted the fundamental role of chemistry in biomedical science and demonstrated that NIGMS is a major supporter of the field.

Titled “50 Years of NIGMS-Supported Chemistry Enabling Biomedical Research,” the symposium featured distinguished speakers who collectively represent the broad range of medically important chemistry we support. Abstracts of their talks are available online. The speakers were:

• Carolyn Bertozzi, University of California, Berkeley
• Stephen Buchwald, MIT
• Linda Hsieh-Wilson, Caltech
• Anna Mapp, University of Michigan
• Thomas O’Halloran, Northwestern University
• Smita Patel, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
• Daniel Romo, Texas A&M University
• Melanie Sanford, University of Michigan
• Vern Schramm, Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University
• Brian Shoichet, University of California, San Francisco

Tom Wandless of Stanford University and JoAnne Stubbe of MIT moderated the symposium.

The theme of the entire ACS meeting, “Materials for Health and Medicine,” reinforced the importance of chemistry to many types of biomedical research, including the structural and functional characterization and manipulation of biological molecules; the characterization of metabolic pathways; the discovery, development and manufacture of therapeutics and diagnostics; and the design and construction of biocompatible materials and nanoscale devices.

It would be an understatement to say that there was a high degree of interest at the meeting in these aspects of chemistry research. Among the evidence is the enthusiastic participation in the symposium by so many leading scientists, co-sponsorship by five ACS divisions (biological, organic, inorganic, carbohydrate and medicinal chemistry), designation as an ACS Presidential event , and excellent attendance.

For more on our support of chemistry research, see the Feedback Loop post by Mike Rogers, the recent Chemical & Engineering News feature article, and the video of a press conference with chemical scientists whose careers were aided by our support.

So far, NIGMS has funded the work of 36 chemistry Nobel laureates. We’ll find out on October 10 if that number increases this year.

“Investigate, Innovate, Inspire” is the theme of a special scientific symposium marking our 50th anniversary.  The event will be held at NIH on Wednesday, October 17, starting at 1:00 p.m.

Please join us in person or by videocast to hear these speakers talk about their NIGMS-supported research, how they recognize and develop exciting ideas, and how they train and mentor the next generation of biomedical scientists:

Carlos Daniel Bustamante, Ph.D. 
Professor of Biological Statistics and Computational Biology and Statistical Sciences and Associate Director, Center for Population and Comparative Genomics
Stanford University

“Population Genetics in the Personal Genome Era: Genomics for the World”

Kathleen Giacomini, Ph.D. 
Professor of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, and Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and Co-chair, Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences
University of California, San Francisco

“Shifting Paradigms for Pharmacologic Research”

Timothy Mitchison, Ph.D. 
Hassib Sabbagh Professor of Systems Biology and Deputy Chair of Systems Biology
Harvard Medical School

“Microtubules: From Basic Biology to Cancer Drugs and Back Again”

The symposium, part of the DeWitt Stetten, Jr., Lecture series we started on our 20th anniversary, will also feature student poster presentations selected in competitions at a number of scientific meetings.

For more information about the event, e-mail me or Janna Wehrle.