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11th Annual Symposium Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation For Advanced Scientific Research June 8-11, 2007 Hyatt Regency Newport Hotel and Spa Newport, Rhode Island (see photos)
Genetic and Epigenetic Regulatory Mechanisms in Human Disease
The Foundation Mission
Although most educated people view DNA as the molecule solely responsible for inheritance, a more complex and nuanced story unfolded during the 11th Annual Symposium of the Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation. Held in Newport, Rhode Island, on June 8-10, this year’s theme was “Genetic and Epigenetic Regulatory Mechanisms in Human Disease.”
Anyone tall enough to peer through a microscope can see that fat, hemoglobin-rich blood cells don’t look anything like neurons with their long, spidery arms. Yet the same DNA is packed into the nuclei of these wildly different cells. So DNA, scientists now say, is not all there is.
Today’s consensus is that structural and functional differences among cell types are determined by “epigenetic” programs that regulate DNA’s activity, some of them marks from environmental assaults, some a form of memory. What makes these proteins and small molecules so important is their capacity to change genetic expression without altering DNA sequence itself.
Epigenetic changes turn an embryonic stem cell into a specialized adult cell and transform normal cells into tumors, according to Whitehead Institute investigator Rudolph Jaenisch. In his keynote address, Jaenisch said understanding how to program and reprogram different types of cells is one of the most important topics in biology today, because such skills would hold enormous promise for treating the ills of humankind.
Epigenetic “reprogramming” is a key step for creating stem cell therapies for cancer and progressive disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, yet these efforts are ensnared in ethical and political complications. Two days before the symposium began, the House of Representatives voted to expand government-supported stem cell research, a piece of legislation destined for Presidential veto despite protests from patients and families. On the same day, Nature published important stem cell findings from Jaenisch’s lab. Elsewhere, cancer patients were participating in clinical trials testing drugs with epigenetic activity, hoping for cures.
These are the real-world complications of the basic science presented by Jaenisch, 18 other speakers and numerous poster presenters at the 2007 symposium. Participants convened at the Hyatt Regency Newport Hotel and Spa on June 8-10, marking the symposium’s return to the United States after four consecutive meetings in Italy.
Powerful ties to Harvard science made Newport an appropriate setting for this year’s meeting. It was here that Alexander Agassiz, curator of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, constructed a pioneering marine biology laboratory in 1875. For the next 25 years, his research teams set sail from Newport to probe the physical, chemical, biological and geological features of the great ocean basins.
Agassiz’s engineering talents had already made him wealthy in the mining industry; in his second career he used these skills to invent new technologies for gathering specimens and taking measurements in deep water. Long before anyone dreamed of unmanned submersibles or fiber optics, he made observations about star fishes, sea urchins and other marine creatures that are still cited today.
The contemporary quest to understand how epigenetic factors control genetic information is as challenging as deep-sea exploration was for the Victorians. Yet progress is being made. Some presenters described how epigenetic factors, such as chromatin packaging and methylation, establish a cell’s identity yet leave it susceptible to change. Others focused on epigenetic functions as a way of recording what happened to one generation and passing that memory to the next.
Sixty participants accepted the invitation to this year’s symposium. Scientists represented Harvard Medical School and its affiliated institutions, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, nine Italian universities and research institutes and one multinational pharmaceutical company. Foundation President Joseph B. Martin, dean of HMS, presided and President Emeritus Daniel C. Tosteson, former dean of the medical school, attended along with members of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees, Scientific Advisory board and Italian Scholarship Advisory Committee.
At their annual meeting, the Board of Trustees voted to create a new Armenise Foundation Chair at HMS. Count Giovanni Auletta Armenise, who could not be present in Newport, joined this decision via telephone from Italy. The Board named Stephen C. Harrison, director of the Armenise-Harvard Center for Structural Biology, as the first holder of this endowed chair. Harrison’s appointment was announced to symposium participants by Dean Joseph Martin.
The program featured talented young scientists who have benefited from Foundation programs at HMS and in Italy. Four winners of HMS Junior Faculty Grants participated in the symposium, including two of three researchers honored in 2007. They were joined by seven recipients of Career Development Awards, which enable Italians to return home and establish their own laboratories after completing post-doctoral training abroad. The Dulbecco Telethon Institute also makes research grants for this purpose, and the Foundation invited Telethon-supported epigenetics researchers to join this year’s symposium and meet potential collaborators.
Also on hand were two Italian science journalists, the latest recipients of the annual Science Writer Fellowships that enable Italian reporters to research stories of their choosing at HMS and participate in the symposium.
Symposium Pages
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