The purpose of this international symposium is to present current work in the broad field of neural regeneration, while highlighting areas in which notable recent progress has been made or in which some particularly interesting issues have been raised. The symposium is planned for December 14-18, 2005 at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California. It is the eleventh in a series of alternate year conferences, all held at the same site and during the same part of the year. The previous ten symposia were in December of 1985 through 2003. The NIH has continuously cosponsored the symposia since 1987, and since the inception of the symposia, the Department of Veterans Affairs has helped to underwrite the costs of the conferences by providing support to: 1) the organizing office; 2) the symposium planning committee meetings; and 3) additional support for each symposium. Applications for support of the 2005 conference have been or will be submitted to the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, United Spinal Association and Paralyzed Veterans of America, all of whom co-sponsored the 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2003 symposia. The proposed 2005 program, which was the product of a meeting of the ISNR Planning Board on July 24, 2004, includes a keynote speaker, six featured speakers, and six major topic sessions, each with a chairman who will present an introductory overview, plus a total of 22 invited session speakers. In addition, there will be free communications in the form of posters contributed by symposium registrants. The meeting is open to anyone who wishes to register, and student attendance is both encouraged and financially supported. The number of registrants is estimated at 250. The content of the symposium will be widely disseminated in the form of a summary in the Regeneration Research Newsletter (international circulation of 4,500), by publication of the abstracts in the symposium program and by placement of the abstracts on the World Wide Web. The long-range plan is to hold the neural regeneration symposia regularly on alternate years at the same time of year and in the same location. These meetings at Asilomar have a single session format and have been organized to maximize interchange between investigators, or between seasoned investigators and students, in the form of free afternoons. This format has been very successful during the previous ten symposia.
