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American Society of Gene Therapy - 9th Annual Meeting Travel reports: Minna Eriksson, Hanna Lesch and Ann-Marie Määttä
Minna Eriksson Cancer Gene Therapy Group Rational Drug Design Program University of Helsinki
The American Society of Gene Therapy 9th annual meeting was held in Baltimore, Maryland in the end of May and beginning of June, 2006. The meeting provided 14 educational sessions, 17 scientific symposia, 16 workshops, oral and poster sessions, late breaking abstracts, an international symposium, and a manufacturing symposium. The topics covered the most interesting areas of gene therapy from RNAi therapy to ethics in clinical trials. My main interests focused on oncolytic adenoviruses, stem cells, and cancer stem cells in cancer gene therapy. I was also fascinated about the clinical trials done in this field, and found many of the sessions very informative for a “fresh” gene therapist as myself. Furthermore, the sessions about different imaging methods were very interesting. I presented a poster “AU-rich 3’ UTR elements for increasing the specificity of promoter regulated adenoviral gene therapy” and I had many stimulating conversations with people interested in my work. The meeting provided me the latest news in gene therapy and gave me an excellent chance to meet scientists working in the same field. I also got new ideas and motivation to continue with my research. I would like to thank the Finnish Society of Gene Therapy for the opportunity to participate in the meeting.
Minna Eriksson
Hanna Lesch A.I.Virtanen Institute Department of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine University of Kuopio
The 9th Annual meeting of American Society of Gene Therapy was held in Baltimore, Maryland in 31 May - 4 June 2006. The meeting started with 14 education sessions covering basic information in variety of topics. More profound knowledge of research one could get from the 17 scientific symposia and 16 workshops. Topics varied from cancer therapy to stem cell gene therapy and from clinical studies to non-viral gene therapy. Lectures to which I attended were interesting and high-level. All together 1115 abstracts were submitted to the meeting and these were represented in oral and poster sessions. I attended session concerning lentiviruses and concentrated to learn more of the field of hematopoetic stem cell therapy and non-viral gene therapy.
I participated to the meeting with the poster titled “Constructing of LodavinTM Expressing Lentivirus”. Poster sessions came one of the best things in the meeting. Audience was active and I had many interesting conversation with the collegues about my own study. I made new contacts with people working with same field of research and got new ideas to process my research project. Time was the limiting factor to be able see all interesting posters, especially those presented at the same time than my own.
This kind of meeting is an excellent and encouraging experience for young scientist like me. It is a good opportunity to update the latest knowledge of the research and learn more. This was the first ASGT meeting for me, and only the second big meeting ever. The ESGT meeting in Prague last year was a learning experience and now I was more able to focus things of my interest. Meeting itself was hard work with all the possibilities, but sufficient groundwork and carefully made schelude provided for best advantage to achieve the goal.
I want to thank the Finnish Society of Gene Therapy for providing me this great opportunity. Hanna Lesch
Ann-Marie Määttä A.I. Virtanen Institute for Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine University of Kuopio
The 9th Annual Meeting for American Society of Gene Therapy in this year was in Baltimore, MD, USA. The program started with educational session in the 31st of May. There were several inspiring and informative lectures covering the basic ideas about gene therapy. While there were many overlapping sessions, I participated in those that concern mostly my job and theses (Oncolytic viruses, Building a strategy for transitional medicine: cancer immunotherapy and Clinical development issues). Next four days included 18 scientific symposia, 17 workshops and oral/poster sessions from submitted abstracts. The conference included variety of newest gene therapy applications including studies from basic molecular sciences to clinical studies and also ethical issues in clinical trial design. Hot-topics: Oligonucleotide therapies, novel vector development, RNAi applications, host-vector intecrations and vaccine therapies.
My main interest in the meeting was oncolytic virotherapy, gene therapy to lungs, animal models and the clinical issues concerning cancer gene therapy, while my PhD thesis consist gene therapy and virotherapy studies to non-small lung cancer with different kinds of disease models. I had an oral presentation in first oral abstract session (Cancer-apoptosis and suicide). The title of my oral presentation was "Evaluation of lung cancer virothearpy with oncolytic Semliki Forest virus using immunodeficient rodent model". In the same session there were lot of interesting talks about oncolytic viruses and how they are used to kill different cancer cells in vitro, in vivo and in clinical studies. Also there was clear trend in using combination treatments (oncolytic viruses + radiotherapy or chemotherapy) and more targeted oncolytic viruses. Most of the oral and poster sessions contained lots of useful information that with I can expand my knowledge about the broad developments on the field of gene therapy. The meeting was very useful to me and my thesis and also it was nice to talk with people working in same subject matter.
I want to thank FSGT for grants.
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