International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM 2012)

DATES: April 22-24, 2012
LOCALE: Nashville, TN
URL: http://bioinfo.mc.vanderbilt.edu/icibm/index.html

Bioinformatics, Systems Biology and Intelligent Computing are synergistic disciplines that hold great promise for the advancement of biomedical research and development through the design of intelligent systems to solve engineering practical problems as well as translational science problems. Research and development in these areas impact science and technology, and synergies among these disciplines provide enormous potential. The International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM) aims to provide a forum for the cross- fertilization of ideas and promotion of interdisciplinary collaborations.

International Conference on Perspective of Cell Signaling and Molecular Medicine

2nd International Conference on Perspective of Cell Signaling and Molecular Medicine  8 to 11 January, 2012 Organised by Bose Institute, Kolkata

Instructions for Submission of Abstract :

1. Only abstracts containing new results will be accepted. Abstracts should clearly and adequately describe the objectives and results of the research. All abstracts must be submitted in English. All abstracts must be accompanied by a completed Conference Registration Form made out in the name of one of the Authors.
a. Each abstract should include a title (in capital letters), name(s) of all authors (underline the presenting author), affiliation and email address.
b. Type entire abstract single-spaced; typing area: width 12.0 cm (4.7 inches), height 24 cm (9.4 inches).
c. Careful typing and proof-reading are essential.

Registration :

• Registration fees : Rs. 4,000/ (Scientist); Rs. 2,500/ (Students including post-docs)


• Late Registration fees : Rs. 5,000/ and Rs. 3,500/ respectively


• Accompanying persons : Rs. 3,000/ and Rs. 2,000/ respectively


• $300  (Foreign participants); $200 (Foreign students)

Contact :Prof. Parimal C. Sen
Secretary,
International Conference on Perspective of Cell Signaling and Molecular Medicine
Bose Institute,
P-1/12 CIT Scheme VII M,
Kolkata-700 054, India.
Tel: +91-33-2569-3222; +91 9433012797 (Cellular)
Fax:  +91-33-2355-3886
E-mail: parimal@bosemain.boseinst.ac.in | parimalsen.boseinst@gmail.com

Dead-line for Registration : November 15, 2011

Robert Geoffrey Edwards, for developing in vitro fertilization (IVF) in humans, receives this year's Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine

Robert Geoffrey Edwards, who developed in vitro fertilization (IVF) in humans, will receive this year's Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Human oocyte Image:wikimedia commons/Ekem

The initially controversial technology has since produced more than 4 million babies worldwide to otherwise infertile parents.

When Edwards, now professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, started his research on infertility in the 1950s, scientists had already successfully fertilized eggs from rabbits in test tubes and produced young. It didn't take much time for Edwards to realize that fertilization outside of the uterus could be a viable option for human couples who were having issues conceiving.

While on the road to developing IVF, Edwards made myriad discoveries that have contributed to researchers' understanding of the maturation of the human egg cell. For example, he deciphered how different hormones control the development of the egg, as well as when the egg is most receptive to fertilization. Finally, in 1969, all the hard work paid off when Edwards, for the first time in history, fertilized a human egg cell in a test tube.

But the road to successfully producing a live, healthy baby in vitro was unpaved and rocky. Initially, the fertilized egg couldn't make it past single cell division. One possible flaw, Edwards guessed, was that the eggs needed to mature inside the ovaries and then subsequently be removed for IVF. Safe ways to accomplish this task, however, remained unknown at the time.

With the help of Patrick Steptoe, once a gynecologist and medical researcher at Royal Oldham Hospital in the UK (now deceased), Edwards was able to fertilize eggs that developed into early embryos. Shortly after this advancement, however, the Medical Research Council cut funding on the project, citing ethical concerns about the technique. The MRC wasn't alone--Edwards received a great deal of criticism concerning the ethics behind his research from religious leaders and scientists alike. However, a private donation kept his research afloat.

On July 25th 1978, years of research paid off when Louise Brown, daughter of Leslie and John Brown, was delivered by Caesarian section after a normal nine-month pregnancy.
Do you want to know more? read the full story on The Scientist

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2010 Robert G. Edwards

Conference on Semantics in Healthcare and Life Sciences (CSHALS)

CSHALS is the premier annual event focused on the use of semantic technologies in the pharmaceutical industry, including hospitals/healthcare institutions and academic research labs.

Rather than a Semantic Web conference, CSHALS focuses on specific applications of semantic technologies. Attendees will gain a better understanding of where the field is headed and be prepared to advance with the field.


Themes of past CSHALS conferences:

• Clinical Information Management

• Discovery Information Integration

• Integrated Healthcare and Semantics in Electronic Health Records

• Translational Medicine / Safety

• Search and Document Management/Business Intelligence/Text Mining

• Text Mining/ Information Extraction

For further details visit 

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Mayo Clinic, Microsoft Team on Patient Health Record Plus

Mayo Clinic is extending its brand across the country. This time, it is offering a free personal health record on the Microsoft HealthVault platform. The Mayo Clinical Health Manager, as the PHR is known, will provide not only a secure place to store medical records online, but also guidance from Mayo experts that will be tailored to the information contained in that PHR. If you are a 50-year-old man with diabetes and hypertension, for example, you will receive information about how you should take care of those conditions and the tests you should receive.

Initially, Mayo Clinic Health Manager will include tools and features that help consumers manage pediatric and adult wellness, immunizations, pregnancy and asthma. Forthcoming features will help users with type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, and/or high blood pressure.

According to Mayo’s press kit, PHR users will be able to “transfer data directly into [a] Mayo Clinic Health Manager profile from a wide range of providers, devices (such as blood pressure cuffs or glucose monitors), pharmacies and health plans connected to Microsoft HealthVault.” But curiously, the Mayo Clinic’s own patients cannot yet upload their medical records to the PHR, according to Mayo spokesperson Ginger Plumbo. “We’re working on it,” she added, noting that that the group hopes to clear away the technical obstacles before the end of the year.

Microsoft HealthVault, like Google Health, has not been very successful so far in getting healthcare providers to share their clinical information online with their patients. Dr. Bill Crounse, senior director of worldwide health for Microsoft, told BNET recently that HealthVault won’t realize its full potential until it includes clinical data. One healthcare system that recently took a big step in that direction is the New York- Presbyterian Hospital, which is using Microsoft’s Amalga software to pull together patient data from its disparate systems for its own PHR on the HealthVault platform. The free PHR is now available to cardiology and cardiac surgery patients at the NYP Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

Getting back to the Mayo Clinic, much of the information that will be made available to its PHR users will come from the massive consumer health library that the group first posted on the Internet in 1995 at www.mayoclinic.com. That free resource reinforced Mayo’s reputation as a premier source of reliable healthcare information on the web.

Meanwhile, Mayo has also partnered with IBM to accelerate research on natural language processing (NLP) through an open-source collaboration involving about 2,000 researchers and developers. Eventually, it is hoped, NLP will enable physicians to retrieve the exact information they are seeking from health records.

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Regenerative Medicine Start-Up Created out of ORNL

Battelle Ventures has spun out a firm from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), with an initial $1.5 million seed investment. The company, called NellOne Therapeutics, will develop regenerative medicines. The funding will be tranched based on key technical milestones.

Towards a "holy grail" in human medicine: the ability to restore organs damaged through trauma, disease, cancer, or even the normal aging process.

Tissue or organ repair has been the ultimate goal of surgery from ancient times to the present day. Clearly, there is a lot of interest in the regeneration of tissues, and tissue repair in organisms is within reach. However, we are a long way from understanding how to coax the human body into regenerating complex body parts after injury or disease. As an example, regeneration of amputated limbs in amphibians - “epimorphic” regeneration which includes cellular dedifferentiation in the injured tissues of the limb stump and proliferation of these cells to form a distal blastema which undergoes patterning and growth to restore the missing limb structures. Some of the processes that are relatively little known and most of scientists are keen in understanding are:

• Processes involving cell recruitment of progenitor cells to the site of disease or injury and tissue-specific differentiation
• Growth factors and cytokines responsible for activating the body's own native cells to initiate regeneration
• Integration of the regenerated tissue within the surrounding host tissue and true differentiation through pathways involved in embryonic development
• Regulation of expression of a target gene can induce the expression of one or more tissue-inductive factors
• Direct the differentiation of stem or progenitor cells, or remove a factor that inhibits regeneration
• Ability of differentiating cells of muscle and other tissues to lose their ability to revert to the proliferative state and contribute to organ regeneration

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• Comprehensive overview of the synergistic and combinatorial effects of receptors in tissue regeneration

Pfizer invests $300 mln in Irish biotech facility

Pfizer Inc, the world's biggest drugmaker, is to invest 190 million euros ($297 million) establishing a new biotech plant in Ireland for the production of experimental medicines, it said on Friday.

It is the first time that Pfizer has placed such internal biopharmaceutical clinical development outside the United States.

The facility at Shanbally in County Cork will be located on a site adjacent to Pfizer's existing operation in Ringaskiddy and will be completed by the end of 2009.

Nat Ricciardi of Pfizer Global Manufacturing said the investment reflected the U.S. group's determination to become a leader in biotech medicine, which is a growing focus for many drug companies worldwide.