IMPACTS symposium

IMPACTS Symposium at the ESP meeting in Helsinki

30th August 2011 from 5 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

See ESP Congress website: http://www.esp-pathology.org/

 

The IMPACTS group has reached an important goal with the publication of the “Guidelines for Molecular Analysis in Archive Tissues”, published by Springer Verlag in July. This is a way to close our group’s long initial phase, that was quite demanding. Now we can be ready to start our second adventure, involving the direct application of molecular methods in archive tissues for translational research and “Reverse Translational Research”.
I would like to invite all of you on August 30th, from 5.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m., to our symposium “Reverse translational research and molecular diagnostics” within the ESP meeting in Helsinki. In these two hours we would like to outline some important aspects. Giorgio Stanta will try to illustrate the peculiarities of “Reverse Translational Research” and how this is something that is strictly related to pathologists’ activity. Manfred Dietel will be clarifying the concept of systems pathology, that is absolutely basic for any clinical applied research. Heinz Hoefler will be explaining how molecular analysis can be highly related to morphology, as a specific research field of pathologists. Thomas Kirchner will be underlining how clinics and tissue heterogeneity can heavily affect any clinical result and the possibility of comparison and reproducibility. Gianni Bussolati will be sharing with us the latest considerations about the paramount problem of tissue and macromolecules preservation. Gerald Hoefler will be giving us an idea of how to standardize our work and about a future programme of possible validation multicentric studies and courses, to improve the pathologists’ ability in “Reverse Translational Research”. Fred Bosman will be summarizing our effort with conclusive remarks, clarifying our route.
Of course, many things are missing and the most important one is bioethics in residual tissues. However, this issue is still too complicated and varied to be included in one methodological symposium. Generoso Bevilacqua, who is in charge of this matter in our group and has already organized a very fruitful meeting in Pisa, will be asked to consider this problem in further discussions and monotematic meetings in the near future.