fp_AnnReport2007:Layout 1 1/22/2008 2:19 PM Page 1 KEYSTONE SYMPOSIA 2007 Annual Report Connecting the Scientific Community for 36 Years fp_AnnReport2007:Layout 1 1/22/2008 2:19 PM Page 2 2007 Fiscal Year Meetings Multi-Protein Complexes Involved in Cell Regulation PI 3-Kinase Signaling Pathways in Disease August 18-23, 2006 February 15-20, 2007, Santa Fe, New Mexico St. John's College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK Reproduction: Advances and Challenges Respiratory Viruses of Animals Causing Disease in Humans February 20-25, 2007, Santa Fe, New Mexico December 10-15, 2006, Singapore Bioactive Lipids in the Lipidomics Era Jaks, Stats, and Immunity February 20-25, 2007, Taos, New Mexico January 5-10, 2007, Steamboat Springs, Colorado Neurobiology of Addiction February 25 - March 1, 2007, Santa Fe, New Mexico Immunological Intervention in Human Disease January 6-11, 2007, Big Sky, Montana *Imaging Immune Responses *Intracellular and Intercellular Signaling in Dendritic Cell Frontiers of NMR in Molecular Biology X Function January 6-11, 2007, Snowbird, Utah February 25 - March 2, 2007, Keystone, Colorado *Diabetes: Molecular Genetics, Signaling Pathways, and *Stem Cell Interactions with their Microenvironmental Niche Integrated Physiology *Stem Cells and Cancer *Obesity: Peripheral and Central Pathways Regulating March 2-7, 2007, Keystone, Colorado Energy Homeostasis January 14-19, 2007, Keystone, Colorado Immunologic Memory March 3-8, 2007, Santa Fe, New Mexico Molecular Mechanisms of Neurodegeneration January 16-21, 2007, Taos, New Mexico Molecular Mechanisms of Fibrosis: From Bench to Bedside March 11-15, 2007, Lake Tahoe, California Genome Instability and Repair January 17-22, 2007, Breckenridge, Colorado *Molecular Targets for Cancer *Mouse Models at the Frontiers of Cancer Discovery Mast Cells, Basophils, and IgE: Host Defense and Disease March 18-23, 2007, Whistler, British Columbia, Canada January 20-24, 2007, Copper Mountain, Colorado Tuberculosis: From Lab Research to Field Trials Chemical Senses: From Genes to Perception March 20-25, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada January 21-25, 2007, Snowbird, Utah *Systems Biology and Regulatory Networks Host Cell Interaction and Response to the Cancer Cell *Cell Signaling and Proteomics January 21-26, 2007, Keystone, Colorado March 22-27, 2007, Steamboat Springs, Colorado * Molecular Pathways in Cardiac Development and Disease Plant Cell Biology * Integrative Basis of Cardiovascular Disease March 23-28, 2007, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho January 22-27, 2007, Breckenridge, Colorado *HIV Vaccines: From Basic Research to Clinical Trials *MicroRNAs and siRNAs: Biological Functions and *Molecular and Cellular Determinants of HIV Pathogenesis Mechanisms March 25-30, 2007, Whistler, British Columbia, Canada *RNAi for Target Validation and as a Therapeutic *Nuclear Receptor Pathways to Metabolic Regulation January 28 - February 2, 2007, Keystone, Colorado *Metabolic Syndrome and Cardiovascular Risk March 27 - April 1, 2007, Steamboat Springs, Colorado Drugs Against Protozoan Parasites January 28 - February 1, 2007, Lake Tahoe, California The Potent New Anti-Tumor Immunotherapies March 28 - April 2, 2007, Banff Springs, Alberta, Canada Antibodies as Drugs: From Basic Biology to the Clinic February 1-6, 2007, Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada The Macrophage: Homeostasis, Immunoregulation, and Disease April 11-16, 2007, Copper Mountain, Colorado Regulatory T Cells February 1-6, 2007, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada Epigenetics: Regulation of Chromatin Structure in Development and Disease Ubiquitin and Signaling April 11-16, 2007, Breckenridge, Colorado February 4-9, 2007, Big Sky, Montana Tissue Engineering and Development Biology Biology of B Tells in Health and Disease April 12-17, 2007, Snowbird, Utah February 6-12, 2007, Banff Springs, Alberta, Canada *Autophagy in Health and Disease Mechanisms Linking Inflammation and Cancer *Apoptotic and Non-Apoptotic Cell Death Pathways February 10-15, 2007, Santa Fe, New Mexico April 15-20, 2007, Monterey, California Nanotechnology in Biomedicine MicroRNA and Cancer February 11-16, 2007, Lake Tahoe, California June 8-12, 2007, Keystone, Colorado *Joint Meetings fp_AnnReport2007:Layout 1 1/22/2008 2:20 PM Page 3 Letter from the Chief Executive Officer Dear Participants, Alumni, and Friends: he 2008 season of Keystone Symposia is the 37th since the first meeting held in 1972 and marks the 11th year of our being an independent T501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization. For its first 34 years, symposia were held exclusively in retreat-like venues, mostly mountain resorts in the USA and Canada. The atmosphere is conducive for both planned and James W. Aiken, Ph.D. spontaneous sharing of information and data as well as the generation of new ideas. Recently we have embarked on a global strategy to make the Keystone Symposia experience more widely available. Although the conferences have always attracted international participation (just over 50% of attendees are US citizens), in 2005 we held our first conference outside North America — in Singapore, on “Stem Cells, Senescence, and Cancer” — which was attended by 442 scientists from 27 countries. This was followed by a conference at Cambridge University in England, a second in Singapore, and conferences in Cape Town, South Africa and Beijing, China in the fall of 2007. As we increase our meetings around the world, the involvement of the global scientific community will grow and so will participation from developing nations. Our strategic objective for the global conferences is to catalyze growth in the capacity for outstanding science worldwide. Another part of the strategy to grow science capacity is ensuring that an increasing number of participants from developing countries are able to attend our symposia in North America as well as meetings that we might hold nearer to their home base. Because of generous support, initially from the Bill & Melinda MEETING PARTICIPATION Gates Foundation but now also from others (The Wellcome Trust, IAVI), Keystone Symposia is able to offer Travel Awards for conferences in our Global Health Series. These awards are intended to provide sufficient funds so that scientists, physicians, post- doctoral trainees, graduate students, or other health professionals from developing countries can attend the conferences. In 2007, we made 179 such awards, and this year we will be able to make over 200. Overall attendance has been growing each year. A record number of participants, approximately 13,500, attended the 50 conferences in the 2007 season. The average size of our 2007 conferences was about 270 attendees. At most conferences, 30 to 40% of attendees are either graduate students or post-doctoral trainees. Our goal is to increase our ability to support young scientists and maintain our symposia as premier venues for interaction between young and established investigators. Grants, mainly from the 3 fp_AnnReport2007:Layout 1 1/22/2008 2:20 PM Page 4 National Institutes of Health, and gifts to the Keystone Symposia Education Fund from both individuals and other organizations allow us to give scholarships to many of the students and post-doctoral fellows SCHOLARSHIPS AWARDED who apply and submit abstracts for poster sessions. Last year we were able to award over 600 scholarships to about one-third of the more than 1,700 applicants, which is both very good and unfortunate news because many qualified applicants did not receive awards. Keystone Symposia is committed to fostering development of new scientists. We do this by trying to create the best possible experience for them at conferences, but this requires more than what we can do alone. Our success is highly dependent on the generous amount of time committed by the leading scientists/mentors in each field and also by the generous donations from supporting foundations, corporations, and government organizations, as well as individual scientists and others who support scholarships through our Friends of the Symposia program. I sincerely thank all those who have helped make this aspect of our program successful. Keystone Symposia strives to connect the scientific community and to be a catalyst for accelerating discoveries that benefit society. Being successful is tightly linked to programming high-quality science, timeliness of the data presented, and robustness of the discussion. A successful conference is marked by energetic participation, contacts that lead to collaborations, and participants leaving with insights that accelerate or change the direction of their research. When a conference is planned, we make every effort to ensure that the program is of superlative quality. The Scientific Advisory Board, currently headed by Dr. Craig B. Thompson, gathers input from many sectors of the scientific community. We have a rigorous peer review process for identifying organizers and evaluating meeting proposals. Our Chief Scientific Officer, Dr. Andrew D. Robertson, is responsible for ensuring that these processes are effectively implemented and continually renewed. From the early days of the Symposia, a strategic objective was bringing participants with diverse backgrounds together. We believe that studying a problem from multiple viewpoints optimizes chances for breakthrough ideas. Increasing the diversity of those involved in our meetings will therefore be a growing priority in the upcoming years. We look forward to the continued success of Keystone Symposia and our ongoing partnerships with all supporters of this