The Monday morning session (“Innate Immunity”) was chaired by Dr. Susan
Rittling (The Forsyth Institute) and featured presentations by Drs. Susan Rittling, Toshimitsu Uede (Hokkaido University, Japan), Vily Panoutsakopoulou, (Biomedical
Research Foundation Academy of Athens, Greece), and Paul Kuo (Duke University) as well as two short talks that were
selected by the organizing committee from submitted abstracts. The theme of
these talks addressed new research on OPN activity in inflammatory responses,
innate immunity and pathogen surveilence. Following the afternoon poster
session and dinner, the Monday evening session (“Adaptive Immunity”) was chaired
by Dr.Johannes Weiss (University of Ulm, Germany) and featured presentations by Drs. Johannes M. Weiss, Harvey Cantor (Harvard Medial School), Mari
Shinohara (Duke University), and
Larry Steinman (Stanford University) with two short presentations selected
by the organizing committee from submitted abstracts. The goal of this session was to convey novel research on OPN intracellular and immune signaling, activity
in multiple sclerosis progression and skin immunity.
The Tuesday morning
session (“Cancer and Metastasis”) was chaired by Dr. B Yajun Guo (SMMU Cancer Institute, China) and featured talks by Ann
Chambers (University of Western Ontario, Canada), George Weber (University of
Cincinnati), Jian Zhao (SMMU Cancer Institute, China) and Vincent Castronovo
(University of Liege, Belgium). The talks addressed new research on OPN as a
biomarker of cancer detection, bone metastases, and disease progression and its
potential molecular mechanisms of action. Following that afternoon’s poster session
and dinner, the Tuesday evening session (“Vascular Biology and Inflammation”) was chaired by Dr. Cecilia Giachelli
(University of Washington) and featured talks by Drs. Marta Scatena (University
of Washington), Robert Taylor (Emory University), Chaeyoung Lee (Soongsil University, Korea), and Anna
Hultgårdh-Nilsson (Lund University
Sweden). These talks and the two short
talks selected by the organizing committee from submitted abstracts addressed OPN biology in the vascular inflammation.
The Wednesday morning
session (“OPN In Autoimmunity, Signaling And The Stress Response”) was chaired
by Dr. David Denhardt (Rutgers University) and featured talks by Drs. Jianxin
Dai (SMMU Cancer Institute, China), Hwyda Arafat, (Thomas Jefferson
University), Kathryn Wang (Sanofi-Aventis US), Mohamed El-Tanani (Queen’s
University Belfast, UK) as well as two short talks (selected from submitted
abstracts) that addressed approaches to interfere with OPN-mediated autoimmunity
and disease progression. Following that afternoon’s poster session and
dinner, the Wednesday evening session
(“Biomineralization”) was chaired by Graeme Hunter (University of Western
Ontario, Canada) and featured presentations by Drs. Ann George (University of Illinois at Chicago), Jeff
Gorski (University of Missouri at Kansas City), Adele Boskey (Weill Medical College of Cornell),
Alain-Pierre Gadeau (INSERM, France). These presentations as well as the two
short talks (selected from submitted abstracts) were presented the state of the
art knowledge on OPN and SIBLING action in normal and ectopic mineralization.
The Thursday morning
session (“Bones and Teeth”), chaired by Dr. Masaki Noda (Tokyo
Medical and Dental University, Japan), featured talks by Drs. Masaki Noda,
Marc D. McKee (McGill University,
Canada), Marian Young (NIDCR, N.I.H) as well as two short talks (selected from
submitted abstracts) that describe the most recent research on OPN (and
SIBLING) biology in skeletal tissue. Following that afternoon’s
poster session and dinner, the evening session (“Receptor Interactions”) was chaired by Dr. David
Haylock, (CSIRO, Australia) and featured talks by Drs. Susie Nilsson (CSIRO, Australia) and Goran Andersson
(Karolinska Institute, Sweden). The final
session is on Friday morning (“Structure Function”) and was chaired by Dr. Esben
Sorensen (Aarhus University, Denmark) and had talks presented by Drs.
Brian Christensen, Aarhus University, Denmark), Alka Jain (Johns Hopkins
University), and Larry Fisher (NIDCR,NIH). All talks in this session addressed emerging understanding of OPN structural variants and
differentially processed cleavage froms of OPN and their biological activity.
