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American Society of Gene Therapy - 10th Annual Meeting Travel reports: Minna Kaikkonen, Iulia Diaconu and Jari Lappalainen
Minna Kaikkonen A.I.Virtanen Institute Department of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine University of Kuopio
My interests for the meeting were related to my recent work projects regarding immunology of gene therapy and baculovirus and lentivirus vector development. I also aimed at immersing myself to the new world of adenoviruses and apart from learning about the recent advances I also learned that the amount of information about these vectors is quite overwhelming. Of special interest was also antibody therapy and it was regarding this subject that the best oral presentation was given in my opinion: It was by Karin Jooss about the “Stable, High-Level Expression of Full-Length Antibodies Using the 2A Peptide”. At this meeting I got the honor to give my first oral presentation about “Targeting of metabolically biotinylated baculoviruses”. After thorough preparation and few days of anxiety, the presentation went well. In retrospect, giving an oral presentation was a nice experience but foremost is was invaluable practice for the future. I also presented a poster on “SPECT/CT Imaging of Baculovirus Biodistribution in Rat Shows Kidneys to be a Promising Target for Intraperitoneal Gene Delivery”. The poster session provided an opportunity to have fruitful conversations and to make valuable contacts which will hopefully lead to collaboration. This was to me the most rewarding part of this meeting. Finally, I would like to thank Finnish Society of Gene Therapy and University of Kuopio for grants and therefore for the opportunity to participate in this great meeting. Minna Kaikkonen
Iulia Diaconu Cancer Gene Therapy Group Molecular Cancer Biology Program University of Helsinki
The American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT) 10th annual meeting was held in Seattle, Washington starting on 29th of May till 4th of June, 2007. It was a jubilee of the ASGT with a lot of Special Sessions, so I had the great opportunity to participate to all these great lectures. The meeting provided 10 educational sessions, 17 scientific symposia, 9 special sessions, 40 oral abstract presentations, 2 clinical trial symposium, 2 meetings with investigators and 1113 posters presented. The topics covered the most interesting areas of gene therapy from basic research to animal models and in the end to get to ethics in clinical trials. My main interests focused on oncolytic adenoviruses, immunotherapy, and animal models. I was also really interested on clinical trials done for cancer gene therapy and about the progress of this field. I had a poster on the second Poster Session named “Ad5/19 for targeting of renal cancer and detargeting the liver”. I got a really great feedback for my data and it was very useful to talk with the others investigators and to get new ideas how should I continue my project. The meeting provided me the great chance to meet many researchers, to make new contacts and to improve my knowledge in the field. I got a lot of information out of all the lectures that I attended and new great ideas for all my projects. Despite all this I had also the chance to meet great people from this Society based on the fact that it was the jubilee and to attend great talks and lectures. For all this great achievement I would like to thank to Finnish Society of Gene Therapy for giving me the opportunity to attend the most important meeting for my field.
Thank you
Jari Lappalainen Department of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine A.I.Virtanen Institute University of Kuopio
The American Society of Gene Therapy 10th annual meeting was held in Seattle in the end of May and beginning of June 2007. The meeting included 19 state-of-the-art scientific symposiums, 9 educational sessions, 40 oral abstract sessions, 3 poster sessions, meet-the-investigator sessions and special 10th anniversary symposium. The topics covered the most interesting areas of gene therapy from RNAi therapy to cutting-edge clinical trials. My main interests focused on oligonucleotide therapies, hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy and cardiovascular gene therapy. I found many of the oral presentations and posters dealt with those subjects very informative for me. Also the other sessions on different fields of gene therapy were very useful to get a more comprehensive view on gene therapy in general. I participated in the meeting with the poster entitled "Silencing of Macrophage Scavenger Receptor A and CD36 by RNA interference Decreases Foam Cell Formation". I had many interesting conversations with people interested in my work. Taken together the meeting was very educative and interesting new experience because this was the first ASGT meeting for me, and also the first big meeting ever. I would like to thank the Finnish Society of Gene Therapy and University of Kuopio for the opportunity to participate in the meeting. Jari Lappalainen
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