) The New York Academy of Sciences is sponsoring a conference entitled: Basic and Clinically Relevant Biology of Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma in late Spring, 2000. The principal investigator and chair is Richard L. Edelson, M.D., Professor and Chairman Department of Dermatology, Yale University School of Medicine. The cochair is Vincent DeVita, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center, Yale University School of Medicine. The purpose of this conference is to broaden the scientific exchanges between leading immunologists, hemato-oncologists, experimental pathologists and investigative dermatologists on the subject of Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma, to bring this disease more into the cancer mainstream and to highlight the significant advances in its understanding that have been made in recent years. Cutaneous T cell lymphoma (CTCL) receives much attention from the scientific and clinical communities, since it is a relatively common and dangerous malignancy, which serves as a testing ground for a wide range of immunotherapies. However, since Dr. Edelson's team first identified the disease in 1975 and conducted an NIH Clinical Staff Conference on the subject, later published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, there has been a paucity of comprehensive conferences effectively placing knowledge of the biology of CTCL in the broader context of research in other lymphomas. This has led to an unfortunate compartmentalization, and even isolation, of expertise in the disorder: a large subset of dermatologists, with only a sprinkling of oncologists and pathologists, have worked on the subject. We hope to catalyze direct communication on the important subject between immunologists, who investigate this most common adult malignancy of T lymphocytes, dermatologists, who care for the often seriously ill patients, and research oncologists and experimental pathologists, whose expertise could help move knowledge of clinically relevant CTCL biology forward, even faster. The proceedings will be published as a volume in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences and will be distributed internationally.
