This application requests support for travel expenses to enable young U.S. investigators to attend and participate in the biennial Bioiron World Congress on Iron Metabolism, with a special emphasis on increasing the participation of women, members of minority subpopulations, persons with disabilities and other individuals who have been traditionally underrepresented in science. The next World Congress on Iron Metabolism, Bioiron 2001, continues the collaboration between the two major international organizations dedicated to the investigation of iron metabolism, combining the 8th Conference of the International Association for the Study of Disorders of Iron Metabolism with the 15th International Conference on Proteins of Iron Metabolism. Bioiron 2001 will be held in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, from August 18 to 23, 2001. The Bioiron 2003 conference will be held in Washington, D.C., and the international site of Bioiron 2005 will be decided at the meeting in Australia. The Bioiron World Congress is recognized as the premier international research conference on iron metabolism. The Bioiron conferences bring together clinicians and basic researchers in a meeting that combines state-of-the-art sessions and symposia given by the world's leading investigators with peer-reviewed presentations and posters of the latest research results. The recent explosion of progress in this field, especially the discovery of novel genes whose products are involved in the regulation of cellular iron uptake and distribution in humans, has made participation in this meeting essential for the development of young U.S. investigators working in this area. Conference abstracts are published in full and distributed to all participants. Major topics to be considered in Bioiron 2001 include animal models of disorders of iron metabolism, iron transport, iron in the pathophysiology of disease, the function and pathobiology of HFE, the gene that is mutated in most patients with hereditary hemochromatosis, the structure of HFE and of the transferrin receptor, non-HFE-related forms of hemochromatosis, and the current status of population screening for hemochromatosis. Specific sessions will be devoted to the structure, regulation and physiology of iron proteins, iron-chelating therapy, and to the roles of iron in the cardiovascular system and in the central nervous system. The overall goal of the Bioiron World Congress is the international dissemination of important new research results to investigators working in the field of iron metabolism.
