We are requesting support for the combined Sixth International Workshop on The Familial Amyloidotic Polyneuropathies and Cardiomyopathies and Other Transthyretin Related Disorders and the Fifth International Workshop of Liver Transplantation in Familial Amyloid Polyneuropathy, to be held from August 24-26, 2005 at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. As in the past, invitees and participants will include clinicians, clinical and research investigators, and representatives from patient groups from many countries to meet and discuss the clinical features, diagnosis, and management of these disorders. This triennial meeting is the only meeting where surgeons, non-surgeon physicians, and researchers meet and share insights and discuss progress in the treatment of these patients. Goals of the meeting are to: 1) Further develop a number of international cooperative interactions as well as more restricted interactions between and among individual investigators initiated at past meetings, including the formation of the Familial Amyloidotic Polyneuropathy Liver Transplantation Registry, a relatively unique entity in international medicine; 2) Present and discuss new data and ideas concerning pathogenesis that are related to development of new therapies; 3) Discuss accrual, progress and unanticipated problems of a recently initiated international trial of an in vitro inhibitor of transthyretin fibrillogenesis; 4) Present new data to continue to define those features common to all FAPs and those that are unique to specific precursors; 5) Provide a setting in which studies of potential therapeutic agents can be organized, maximizing the numbers of available patients and allowing the results obtained in non-contemporaneous trials to be analyzed in a standard format.
