WELCOME
The 39th Annual Meeting of the American
Aging Association:
Inflammation and Aging: Causes and Consequences
The 39th annual American Aging Association meeting will be held in Portland, OR, on June 4-7, 2010. The theme of the meeting will be: “Inflammation and Aging: Causes and Consequences”. As you may guess from the title, the charge for the speakers is to delve into the reasons why aging often is described as “pro-inflammatory” state, to shed light on the consequences of increased pro-inflammatory markers upon normal and suboptimal aging, and to highlight areas of research where urgent efforts will be needed to fully understand the relationship between inflammation and aging.
The program committee is working to ensure participation of top experts in aging research from all over the world, hailing from academia, government, and industry. As usual, the meeting will consist of invited symposia, contributed oral papers, and poster presentations. Some of the successful patterns from prior meetings will be continued. To that effect, we will feature the two signature plenary talks will be given by the yet to be named winners of the Vince Cristofalo award (sponsored by AFAR) and the Denham Harman award (sponsored by AAA). Likewise, we will have our annual TransAtlantic symposium (scheduled for Saturday, 6/5, pm), however, this time the focus will be on an exciting Trans-Atlantic initiative, the funded collaborative projects between US and UK scientists, jointly funded by the NIA and BBSRC. We expect to hear from several US-UK teams on their plans and approach for joint projects.
The program will contain both plenary talks and simultaneous symposia run concurrently, although the latter will be less prominent in the program than in the years past. Moreover, we will insist that chairs run the sessions ON TIME, allowing attendees to move between concurrent sessions in a time-coordinated fashion. Tentative topics for the conference will be: “Microbes, immunity and inflammation”; “Fat organ as the source of inflammation in aging”; “Neural inflammation in the course of aging”; Inflammatory changes in aging muscles”; “Frailty and Inflammation”; “Aging, hormones and inflammation”, “Inflammation in old bones and joints” and “Rejuvenation approaches to aging and inflammation”. Following the example of the highly successful 2009 meeting, organized by Dr. Mitch Harman, we will again include speakers whose emphasis is “translational,” oriented toward human physiology and disease. Moreover, within the session on “Frailty and Inflammation” we will have a round table discussion on improving communication between physicians and bench scientists to the benefit of translational and clinical research.
The pre-meeting symposium on Friday, June 4, will be jointly supported by AGE, American Federation on Aging Research (AFAR), and talks are in progress to include the Geriatric Society of America (GSA) as well, for what we hope to become a traditional symposium. It is likely that the theme will be “Cutting-Edge Issues in Aging Research” – please visit soon again for final announcement.
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Janko Nikolich-Zugich, MD, PhD
2010 AGE President and Annual Meeting
Chair
