This application requests support for United States fellows to attend the Clinical Immunology Society (ClS)-sponsored School on Systemic Autoimmune Diseases. This request accounts for 39% of the funding required to support the fellows' travel and lodging expenses. Additional funding will be solicited by CIS from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The CIS-planned school on CIS Systemic Autoimmune Diseases will follow the planning and execution blueprint established during the first CIS-sponsored school on systemic autoimmune diseases. The first school was in part sponsored by NIAMS through an R13 and industry. The second School will be an intensive 4-day residential course to be held in March, 2005 in Santa Fe, MM. The subsequent, 3rd through 6th CIS Schools on Systmeic Autoimmune diseases will also be held at the beginning of March of each year again in Santa Fe, NM. The program will be advertised through the academic program directors and members of the CIS, the American College of Rheumatology and the Ametican Association of Allergy and Applied Immunology as well as through other major societies with interests in clincial immunology. While adveritizing emphasis will be given to attract applicants representing minorities. The topic of the School will be Systemic Autoimmune Diseases, geared toward fellows in training holding either an MD and /or a PhD, within their last years of fellowship training. The primary goal of the School is education on the diagnosis, pathogenesis, and treatment of systemic autoimmune diseases such as SLE, Scleroderma, Arthritis, Vasculitis as well as gene therapy. These presentations will include topic overviews, state of the art established treatments, laboratory approaches, pathogenesis and future biologies. Emphasis will be given to new treatments that are under development and future possibilities. More importantly, sufficient time will be allocated for fellows to present either interesting cases or their work. These presentations will form the nidus for fertile discussions and exchange between the fellows and the faculty. By the end of the School, participants should be able to better diagnose and treat systemic autoimmune diseases; have an enhanced awareness of clinical immunology processes as they relate to systemic autoimmune diseases and its importance in scientific discoveries and clinical application; and become ambitious in pursuing academic careers to further our understanding, diagnosis and treatment of human systemic autoimmune diseases. Lastly, the School should stimulate future collaborations between young investigators in different medical centers and countries, and between young investigators and experienced physician / scientists in the field. The School will be residential in character and held in an informal setting and will attract applicants from America, Europe and Asia. There will be 11 faculty and 25 fellows. At least 40% of the participants will be female and every effort will be applied to select minority fellows. Only fellows from the United States will recieve funding made possible through the NIH grant.
