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The Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation Structural Biology and Microbial Pathogenesis and the Host Response About the Symposium The threat of attack, the importance of defense, and the need to know more about each have become near universal worries since September 11. People who seldom thought about these issues in the wake of the Cold War now avidly follow the daily news. In contrast, attack, defense, and intelligence gathering are long-standing concerns for the select group of researchers who participated in “Structural Biology and Microbial Pathogenesis and the Host Response,” the 6th Annual Symposium of the Giovanni Armenise-Harvard Foundation. Although the symposium’s theme was decided before bioterrorism became a reality last Fall, those events greatly magnified its relevance. Anthrax, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria were among the globally important diseases explored in 22 invited lectures and an equal number of poster presentations. Investigators described using X-ray crystallography, as well as micro arrays and other post-genomic tools, to better understand the battle between pathogens and their hosts. The stakes are high: speakers emphasized that despite medical progress, infectious diseases still account for one in three deaths worldwide – the same toll they took on humankind 400 years ago. The symposium was held June 27-29 at Marriott Frenchman’s Reef, St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Although the Caribbean is justly celebrated for its natural beauty, the people of these islands live with endemic malaria and tuberculosis, and this region is second only to sub-Saharan Africa in its rate of HIV infection. In her closing remarks, Dr. Giulia De Lorenzo was optimistic about the impact of research presented during the symposium. New technologies such as structural biology, bioinformatics, and functional genomics will help generate not only new treatments and vaccines for combating human infectious disease, but also new strategies for protecting the global food supply. “Understanding the molecular logic of pathogenesis is crucial for future progress,” said Dr. De Lorenzo, a professor of plant biology at the Universita’ Di Roma La Sapienza and a member of the program committee for the symposium. Last year, Foundation President and CEO Daniel C. Tosteson inaugurated a Career Development program that provides talented young Italian investigators with support needed to establish research laboratories in their home country. The 2002 Career Development awards were presented to Giampietro Schiavo and Rosella Visintin. Schiavo, who has been studying membrane dynamics at the nerve terminal at the Imperial Cancer Fund in London, will be joining the Department of Biological Chemistry at the University of Padova. Visintin has been investigating key regulators of mitosis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and will be returning to Italy to establish a lab at the European Institute of Oncology in Milano. Visintin was unable to attend the symposium. Schiavo, who gave a lecture, was the only participant affiliated with a U.K. institution; 28 scientists came from five leading Italian research institutions and 48 represented the six basic science departments located on the Quadrangle at Harvard Medical School. Italian participants came from the European Institute of Oncology in Milano, the University of Padova, the Institute for Cancer Research and Treatment at the University of Torino School of Medicine, the Dipartmento di Ricerca Biologica e Tecnologica (DIBIT) at Scientific Institute San Raffaele in Milano, and Universita’ Di Roma La Sapienza. Symposium Pages
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About the Symposium
