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High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia |
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HBPRCA Email Newsletter
December 2008
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The final e-news for the year we
saved until after the 30th Annual Scientific Meeting which was an
outstanding success by all accounts.
Thanks must go to Kate and Markus and as well of course to Athina
(behind the scenes) for organising such a wonderful event setting such a high
standard. The dinner was really
wonderful with the quiz and Michael’s tinkling of the ivories to name a few
of the highlights.
Wishing you and your families a very Merry Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year. Photos from the ASM To view photos of the conference, please click here. To view photos of the dinner, please click here. We have a small number of
Commemorative Booklets, group photos and abstract books left over from the ASM.
If you would like a copy of any of these, please let Athina know at hbprca@meetingsfirst.com.au. Best wishes
Professor Geoffrey A
Head |
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PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE from Stephen Harrap Looking back on the last 30
years of the HBPRCA, one can't but help wondering how Austin Doyle might have
felt. I suspect that he'd be very relieved by the unwavering commitment to
high quality research and the strong place of Australia on the global blood
pressure map. He'd be delighted to see that the 50 founding members had been
the seed for a society of over 300 and especially pleased to see the future
of the Council as reflected by the bright young minds of our students and
postdoctoral scientists. I’m pretty sure he would have also enjoyed the
celebrations for our 30th Annual Scientific Meeting and seeing the
generations of our Blood Pressure Family creating good memories together.
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MEETING NEWS from Kate Denton and Markus Schlaich What a busy week! I hope
that everyone came away from the meeting with a sense that it was a 'good'
(an English understatement) meeting. Certainly the Austin Doyle
Lecturer by David Sinclair will go down as one of the best cross disciplinary
lectures that I have heard, a well balanced mix of science, vision and
humour. Equally Carlos Ferrario, as the RD Wright Lecturer gave us a
brilliant history of the other peptides of the renin-angiotensin system; from
the early times when few believed in a role for Ang(1-7), through the
burgeoning evidence that this peptide is a major player in the RAS, to the
evidence today that several Ang peptides are biologically active including a
new player Ang(1-12). Our own Bruce Neal, the Colin Johnston Lecturer,
gave an impassion talk highlighting the need to reassess how cardiovascular
risk and therefore treatment is addressed in the future. We will have
to look hard to match such an excellent set of speakers next year. All
should give consideration to this and send in any suggestions! I would also like to
congratulate Justin Davies on an excellent, provocative and well defended
presentation. I would also like to congratulate all our prize winners- o
Student Oral Presentation award and winner of the CHBPR
award; Michael De Silva, Department of Pharmacology, Monash University o
Early Career Investigator Oral Award and winner of the BHS
award; Elena Velkoska, Austin Health, University of Melbourne o
Early Career Investigator
Poster Award: Rachael Dean, Austin Health, University of Melbourne o
Student Poster
Presentation (Joint winners): Sarah McCann, Bernard O'Brien Institute of
Microsurgery and Amanda Rickard, Prince Henry's Institute of Medical
Research. Finally, the winners of the new
category the Student's Choice Best Poster Award are to be
congratulated Colleen Thomas, Erin O'Callaghan, Keith
Ng, Wendy Ip, Claudia McCarthy, Sanja Bosnyak and Zanfina
Ademi. I would particularly like to thank all the students and mentors
(Robyn Woods, Roger Evans, Andrew Allen, Annemarie Henessey, Emma Jones,
Simon McMullen, James Armitage and James Sharman). By all reports this
initiative worked well and we intend to continue it next year. Any
feedback on this process or suggestions for next year welcomed. Season’s greetings and happy holidays!
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WORKSHOP NEWS from Geoff Head, Markus Schlaich, Kate Denton and Arduino
Mangoni As part of the ASM 2009 we have for the first time incorporated a workshop
focussing on technologies used in human and animal cardiovascular research.
The concept was born from previously very successful workshops in animal
cardiovascular research and we have now expanded this concept to include
technologies and devices used in clinical research in the hope that this will
interest both the basic and clinical researchers as well as the many hybrid
researchers within our Council. We had called upon expert's with hands-on
experience to share their knowledge as well to give us the good and bad,
warts and all. The third topic was CNS blood pressure regulation: future
directions. We were delighted to see that
there was substantial interest in the workshop and that the presentations
sparked interesting and fruitful discussion on many topics. With over 100
registrants, we clearly had one of the most successful workshop days in our
memory. Our choice to include 3 themes was also warmly received. We would
like to take the opportunity to again thank all the speakers for their time and
effort to present at the workshop and the attendees for their contributions.
The feedback we have received so far was very positive and we are keen to
hear more from you. We are planning to have a
similar workshop at next year’s ASM in Sydney and you may want to start
thinking about interesting topics…. See you all at next year’s
workshop. |
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STUDENT NEWS from Ann Goodchild Student member to
sit on Council The role of this non-voting role is to provide a student
perspective to the council, to liaise with the Student Liaison Officer, to
seek views, and encourage participation, from student members of the council.
The student member will be expected to participate in all meetings of the
Executive Committee. For those applying to please forward your CV
together with a short paragraph (less than half a page) of why you are
seeking the position and what you will try to achieve to hbprca@meetingsfirst.com.au.
Deadline for this application will be January 30th 2009. Should more than one application be received a
decision will be made by a subcommittee of Council. If any further
information is required please email ann.goodchild@vc.mq.edu.au.
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SOCIETY NEWS from Bruce Neal British
Hypertension Society Annual Scientific Meeting: Report 2008 As the winner of High Blood
Pressure Research Council of Australia Young Investigator award for 2008, I
was given the opportunity to attend the British Hypertension Society Annual
Scientific Meeting, which was held in Cambridge in September of this year.
Having just recently returned, I am still buzzing with new ideas as a result
of the exceptional quality of the scientific research presented during the
conference. Spanning over a period of 3 days, the program was jam packed full
of interesting and sometimes controversial presentations. The presentation
which probably invoked the largest response from the very vocal audience was
delivered by Professor Stephen MacMahon, who called into questioned the
usefulness of classifying patients as Hypertensive in a talk titled
“Hypertension- time to give it up?”. The student presentations were equally
of a very high standard and I am looking forward to welcoming Justin Davies
as the winner of the BHS Young Investigator Award to the HBPRCA meeting in
Melbourne next December, hopefully he will find the exchange as interesting
and thought provoking as I did. In addition to listening to a
plethora of excellent talks, I was also able to establish numerous contacts
throughout the meeting, that I am sure will be of great benefit as I continue
with my scientific career. So to conclude, I would like to express my sincere
thanks to the HBPRCA for giving me this opportunity and I am looking forward
to attending the next HBPRCA conference in December. Many thanks Claudia McCarthy Franco Exchange
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AUSTIN DOYLE LECTURER: David Sinclair Publication from NATURE, Vol 456, 27 November 2008 Mice share yeast’s
ageing system A protein that regulates
lifespan in yeast by protecting its genome may perform the same function in
mammals, studies in mice suggest. The work addresses a lingering uncertainty
about sirtuins, a family of proteins that are a focus of research in the lucrative
market for anti-ageing drugs. In April, Sirtris Pharma-ceuticals, based in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and co-founded by David Sinclair of Harvard
Medi-cal School, who is the lead author of the new work, was purchased by
pharmaceuti-cal giant GlaxoSmithKline for US$720 million.Researchers already
knew that a yeast sirtuin called Sir2 is a sentinel of the organism’s genome,
preventing genes from being expressed at the wrong times and blocking the
chro-mosomal rearrangements that sometimes occur in areas of repetitive DNA
sequence. But when DNA strands break, Sir2 molecules move to repair the
damage, leaving their usual positions unguarded. As cells age, the rate of
DNA damage increases, forcing Sir2 proteins to leave their original posts
more frequently. Some genes that were meant to be silenced are then free to
be expressed, generat-ing a shift in patterns of gene expression that is
characteristic of ageing.Increasing Sir2 levels slows ageing in yeast, but it
has been unclear whether sirtuins would act by a similar mechanism in
mammals. “People, includ-ing myself, struggled with the acceptance that a
mechanism of ageing in a yeast could be relevant to a human,” says Sinclair.
Now, he and his colleagues report that a mouse sirtuin called SIRT1 behaves
much like its yeast counterpart (P. Oberdoerffer et al. Cell
doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.10.025; 2008). In mouse embryonic stem cells, SIRT1
also associates with regions of repetitive DNA, and silences the expression
of certain genes. But when the cells are treated with hydrogen peroxide, a
chemical that can cause DNA damage, SIRT1 is recruited to the site of DNA
breakage, and previously silenced genes become expressed. Further-more, the
team found similar changes in gene-expression patterns in brains of elderly
mice. “This could be the key to understanding how sirtuins could be
beneficial during ageing,” says Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of
Medicine in New York. Sinclair now aims to find out whether increas-ing SIRT1
expression in old mice can revert gene expression to a more youthful pattern
— effect-ively reversing the effects of ageing. Heidi Ledford |
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JOBS available RMIT, School of Medical Sciences Lecturer Pharmacology Continuing Level B Academic Closing date 20/2/09 For further details, please click here. |
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ISH2012 Congress We are delighted to share the October edition of the
“ISH Hypertension News – An Electronic Newsletter” with you and your
society. Please click here
to view a copy. This issue includes amongst other things: o
An update from the new ISH
President, Tony Heagerty o
Profiles of our 5 new ISH
Council members o
An interesting report on
the fantastic hypertension meeting in Berlin with comments ”from the floor”
made by John Chalmers (Sydney), Thomas Kahan (Stockholm), and Stuart Spencer
(The Lancet, London). o
A report on the second ISH
Teaching Seminar in Douala, Cameroon, held in French
Of particular interest to Forum Members; updates
from national societies of hypertension sent to us from France, Australia,
Israel, Italy, Japan, and Sri Lanka We would also like to ask you to ‘save the
date’ for next ISH Biannual Scientific Meeting, which will take place
from 26 - 30 September 2010 in Vancouver, Canada. Further details of this meeting can be found by
viewing the following link http://www.vancouverhypertension2010.com For your reference we have
also attached a promotional slide for the Vancouver meeting, which we would
appreciate if you could distribute to your society members or include in any
relevant communication material. Kind Regards Schula Byrne Association Manager International Society of Hypertension
Secretariat |
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AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH News November 2008
Newsletter Please click here
to view Message from the
new President I write to introduce myself as
your new President and share with you our plans for the coming year.
ASMR President |
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Athina Patti at Meetings First t 61 3 9739
7697 f 61 3 9739 7076 |
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HBPRCA would like to acknowledge the support of the
following companies: CORPORATE MEMBERS
CORPORATE SPONSORS
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