American Society of Gene Therapy - 7th Annual Meeting

Travel reports: Outi Meriläinen and Shalini Bhardwaj

Outi Meriläinen

A.I. Virtanen Institute for Molecular Sciences

University of Kuopio

The seventh annual meeting of American Society of Gene Therapy took place in the beginning of the June in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Abstracts were submitted about 1060, which was probably less than previous years. Program of the meeting included education sessions at the first day, oral- and poster sessions, workshops, scientific symposia and meet-the-investigator lunches. Main topics of the meeting were targeted viruses, stem cell technologies, adeno-associated viruses, immunology of gene therapy, vector integration and also a lot about non-viral gene transfer. A new hot topic seemed to be use of zinc finger in gene therapy. Basic idea is to switch off or activate genes by using zinc finger DNA-binding proteins.

My own interest was concerning about different methods of delivering RNA in vitro and in vivo, such as electroporation, gene gun and lipofection. Also innate immune response to viral vector as well as protein transduction domains were main interests. Quality of posters was very variable, also several posters were abscent from the poster sessions. Oral presentations were excellent; well prepared, well presented and also presented in the given time. I participated meeting with the poster titled “HIV-1 TAT protein transduction domain -mediated enhancement of HSV-TK/ganciclovir- suicide gene therapy”.  I had many interesting discussions and good advices from the people who stopped by mine poster. A “funny” thing was also that next to mine poster was presentation with contrary data to what we have found about the same subject.

7^th annual meeting of ASGT was first big meeting for me, so it was really chastening and exciting experience overall. Chance to meet and discuss with people working with the same subjects and wrestling with the same problems was very interesting. I would like to thank Finnish Society of Gene Therapy and University of Kuopio for grant and therefore chance to participate this meeting.

Outi Meriläinen

 Shalini Bhardwaj

Department of Molecular Medicine

A.I.V Institute, University of Kuopio

The 7th Annual Meeting was hosted at the Minneapolis. The meeting included education sessions, scientific symposia, workshops, oral and poster sessions. Some of the topics covered included stem cells, gene-based vaccines, immunology of gene therapy, clinical trials, tissue engineering, infectious diseases, musculo-skeletal disorders, respiratory tract disorders, and non-viral and viral gene transfer.

I had an oral presentation titled Placental Growth factor gene transfer in periadventitial tissue.  It was an honor to present my work in this prestigious Gene Therapy meeting. It took a good amount of preparation of scientific text and lots of butterflies in the stomach but in the end it was worth the effort.

Lecture by Dr. Harriet L. Robinson on vaccine for HIV/AIDS was informative and interesting. Sessions on clinical gene therapy were a good update for the present stage and progress of gene therapy in the direction of therapeutic application. There were educative sessions on targeted gene delivery for Myocardial disease and cell and gene therapy for heart failure. There were engaging educational oral and poster sessions on Viruses. I was particularly interested in Adenoviral and AAV vector presentations as I use them as gene transfer vectors for my studies. It was also very interesting to learn about the gene transfer to the eyes in the poster session as our group has been recently involved in this new project.

I was also lucky to meet some old friends and I was also able to enjoy Indian food that I miss living in Kuopio.

I wish to thank the Finnish Gene Therapy Society for financial support.

 Shalini Bhardwaj