Scientific programmeupdated:2010-03-05

Confirmed Guest Plenary Lecturers

» Date: 2010-03-05

  • “Hair follicle pluripotent stem (hfPS) cells for regenerative medicine:
    An advantageous alternative to ES and iPS cells.”

    Robert M. Hoffman

    Ph.D.
    President, AntiCancer, Inc.
    Professor of Surgery, University of California,
    San Diego, CA, United States of America

  • “MSH and related peptides, beyond pigmentation”

    Professor Thomas Luger,

    M.D., Ph.D.,
    Chairman, Dept. of Dermatology University of Münster,
    Münster, Germany

    Professor Thomas Luger obtained his MD from Vienna University, where he was Resident and Assistant Professor of Dermatology. He is the Director and Chairman of the Department of Dermatology, and also the Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Cell Biology and Immunobiology of the Skin at Münster University. His clinical interest is focused on allergic and autoimmune diseases of the skin, his main areas of research are the role of neuropeptides in mechanisms of immune tolerance, and the significance of endothelial cells in the pathogenesis of inflammatory reactions. Currently he became President of the German Society of Dermatology and Editor of the journal Experimental Dermatology. He is a former Dean of the Medical Faculty and Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Member of the German Academy of Natural Science Leopoldina, and Member of the Northrhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences.

  • “DNA Damage Responses: From Mechanisms to Human Disease”

    Michael B. Kastan,

    M.D., Ph.D.,
    Director, Comprehensive Cancer Center,
    St. Jude Children's Research Hospital,
    Memphis, TN, United States of America

    Michael Kastan is the Director the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center and has been a scientific leader in the field of understanding cellular responses to DNA damage and other stresses. He has made numerous seminal discoveries which have led to national and international recognition and awards, including being honored by the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society as a Steven Birnbaum Scholar and a Stohlman Scholar, election to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and the Association of American Physicians, and receiving the prestigious 2007 G.H.A. Clowes Memorial Award from the American Association for Cancer Research for outstanding contributions to basic cancer research. He was also recently elected into the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Dr. Kastan has served as Chairman of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute and on the Board of Directors of the American Association for Cancer Research. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the journal Molecular Cancer Research and Editor of the textbook Clinical Oncology.

  • “In vivo imaging of precursor migration & lineages”

    Scott E. Fraser.

    Anna L. Rosen Professor of Biology & Engineering and Applied Science Beckman Institute Caltech,
    Pasadena, CA, United States of America

  • “Next generation Omics” (to be confirmed)

    Yoshihide Hashizaki,

    M.D., Ph.D.,
    Director Omics Science Center Riken Yokohama Institute,
    Yokohama, Japan

  • “Femtobiology of Photoprotection”

    Professor Villy Sundstrom,

    Department of Chemical Physics, Lund University
    Lund, Sweden

    PhD at Umea University Sweden, 1977, after studies at Bell Labs under the guidance of prof. Peter Rentzepis. Following receipt of PhD, the first ultrafast laboratory in Scandinavia was established in Umea. Presently Sundstrom is professor and Head of the Chemical Physics Department, Lund University. Received the ERC Advanced Investigator Award 2008. Editor of Chemical Physics Letters. Research interests include:

    • Femtobiology. Ultrafast spectroscopy applied to various biological systems
    • Photosynthetic light-harvesting. The energy flow pathways and energy transfer mechanisms in photosynthesis have been studied in great detail.
    • Interfacial electron transfer in dye-sensitized nanostructured semiconductors.
    • Excited state and charge carrier dynamics in organic semiconductors. Chemical reaction dynamics in solution. A large number of photoisomerization and photodissociation reactions have been studied.
    • Ultrafast structural dynamics in chemical and biological systems, studied with time resolved X-ray spectroscopy.
    • Photophysics and photochemistry of melanin pigments and its building blocks.

  • “Keratin disorders associated with abnormal pigmentation: clinical and molecular insights.”

    Professor Eli Sprecher,

    Department of Dermatology, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center,
    Tel Aviv, Israel

    Prof. Eli Sprecher serves as chair of Dermatology at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel. He is also Associate Professor of Dermatology at the Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel as well as Visiting Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. He received his MD degree from Hadassah Medical School, completed a PhD thesis in molecular virology at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel and trained in dermatology at the Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel. He spent a post-doctoral fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA and moved back to the department of Dermatology at the Rambam Medical Center where he directed the Laboratory of Molecular Dermatology until 2008. In 2007, he was appointed deputy director of the Rappaport Institute for Medical Sciences, Technion, Haifa, Israel and in 2007 he established within the same institute the Rappaport-Rambam Center for Translational Genetics. In 2008, he moved to Tel Aviv to head the Department of Dermatology at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Tel Aviv, Israel. His research deals with the molecular genetics of inherited and acquired skin diseases. His group has uncovered the genetic basis of 12 different diseases over the years, he has co-authored more than 120 scientific publications and he is the recipient of numerous international awards including the Everett C. Fox Award of the American Academy of Dermatology and the Alfred Marchionini Award.

  • “Neuromelanins in brain aging and Parkinson's disease.”

    Professor Luigi Zecca,

    Institute of Biomedical Technologies-CNR,
    Milan, Italy

    Luigi Zecca M.D. is Director of the Institute of Biomedical Technologies of Italian National Research Council in Milan. His research interests are on brain aging and neurodegenerative mechanisms of Parkinson's disease with particular emphasis on the role of neuromelanin and metals. He has shown the main structural aspects of neuromelanin and its interaction with metals in human brain. He has described key features of neuromelanin synthesis and its accumulation in lysosomal organelles during brain aging. He has demonstrated that intraneuronal neuromelanin is protective while extraneuronal neuromelanin can activate microglia and induce neuronal degeneration. He has shown that neuromelanin organelles and related phenomena are present in all neurons of human brain and are not limited to catecholaminergic neurons.

Preliminary programme

« Skin and Other Pigment Cells: Bridging Clinical Medicine and Science »

1st version to be announced spring 2010.

» Venue: Palais des Congrès, Bordeaux, France

» Date: 21-24 Sept 2011

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