Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. New treatments are being formulated based on a better understanding of the signaling pathways involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases. Furthermore cell replacement therapy has recently emerged as a novel way of correcting contractile and vascular deficiencies in cardiovascular diseases. The focus of this yearly symposium will be on the use of somatic gene transfer and cell therapy in cardiovascular diseases. Targeting genes to the heart through somatic gene transfer or transplanting stem cells have the potential to alter our approach to patients with cardiovascular diseases. Gene and cell therapy allow us to test hypotheses about mechanisms of disease, and, it is hoped, tailor therapy accordingly. This symposium will bring together scientists from industry, clinicians and basic scientists. It will be a multidisciplinary meeting that should bring together people who are beginning to have regular dialogues but whose traditions have been somewhat separate Through this combination of investigators with multidisciplinary backgrounds, diverse scientific perspectives will be brought into focus on gene and cell therapy. The conference will consist of cover nine separate sessions over two and a half days. The topics of the sessions are 1) Viral vectors, 2) Delivery approaches, 3) Lessons from development, 4) Cell therapy, 5) Targeting Ischemic Heart Disease, 6) Targeting hypertrophy and growth, 7) Targeting heart failure and arrhythmias, 8) Targeting vascular disease, and 9) NIH programs and regulatory issues.The conference will be organized on a yearly basis in April. All the logistics of the first conference along with speaker commitments have been completed and the assigned date of the first conference is April 8-20, 2002. The convergence of investigators from different fields which are typically separate will hopefully foster greater collaborative efforts in gene and cell therapy and provide better understanding and treatment modalities for cardiovascular diseases.
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