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Tanja Rauma
AMERICAN SOCIETY OF GENE THERAPY The 3rd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gene Therapy was held next to the Rocky Mountains, in Denver, Colorado. Gene transfer researchers all over the world took part of the meeting which consisted of scientific symposia, oral presentation sessions, poster presentations, plenary sessions, education programs, corporate symposia, and exhibits. The lectures covered the most important topics of gene transfer. I found interesting the recent advances in clinical gene therapy. For example Alain Fisher showed promising results around successful gene therapy treatments of inherited SCID diseases. Using retroviral gene transfer they were able to provide full correction of disease phenotype and clinical benefit in four patients of five. This was the first successful application of gene therapy to treat difficult genetic diseases. I also found interesting the presentations of targeting viral vectors and localizing gene transfer to specific cell types as well as lectures of improving adenovirus-based gene delivery. A subject that people discussed a lot in the meeting was the failed gene therapy experiment last year, where an 18 years old boy died. The benefits, risks and safety points must be carefully considered when doing clinical gene therapy trials in humans. I presented my poster on the first poster session among the other posters of genetic diseases. My topic was "Adenoviral gene transfer corrects lysyl hydroxylase deficiency in Ehlers-Danlos syndrome VI". I showed that LH activity and human LH mRNA expression increases in cell cultures of rat and EDS patient fibroblasts as well as in rat skin after adenoviral gene transfer. It is possible that the type of treatment described in our study may offer some alleviation for local symptoms of EDS VI patient. I discussed about the results with investigators who were interested in my poster, and at the quiet times I was looking at the other interesting poster presentations. Because this was my first meeting in abroad, it took some time to get to know how everything works. I got valuable experience for the next time. It was good to find out how to prepare for large meetings. Because there are so many things going on at the same time, it is necessary to get to know to the schedule well in advance. This was also a good practice for my English skills, which are necessary when discussing with other researchers. As a summary the ASGT meeting was very instructive and an unforgettable experience. I memorized many details, which may be beneficial to my research. But most important I got a lot of inspiration and new ideas. Tanja Rauma |