The Fourteenth International Symposium on bradykinin and related kinins, """"""""Kinin 95 Denver,"""""""" will be held at the Radisson Hotel, Denver, Colorado, 10-16 September 1995. John M. Stewart, Professor of Biochemistry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, was appointed by the International Kinin Advisory Committee to chair this meeting. It is anticipated that the symposium will attract 400-600 participants. Foreign participation may well be around 50%. Partial support for the symposium is being sought from the NHLBI, NIH. Bradykinin and related kinins are peptide hormones involved in regulation of every major physiological system, and are the initiators or mediators of most kinds of inflammation. The discovery by Stewart and Vavrek in 1984 of the first antagonists of bradykinin opened a new era of study of kinin physiology and pathophysiology, and stimulated drug development programs at several companies. Bradykinin antagonists are now in clinical trials for septic shock, Hantavirus pneumonia, head trauma, adult respiratory distress syndrome, and asthma. Bradykinin receptors have now been cloned and sequenced, and the interaction between receptors and kinin agonists and antagonists is the subject of intense study. The first non-peptide bradykinin antagonists have been described, stimulating further research for development of orally active drugs. It is anticipated that at the Denver symposium many important new results will be disclosed in the areas of receptor function, second messengers of the kinin systems and clinical development of bradykinin antagonists.
