We request partial funding for the 11 Annual Meeting of the Society for Free Radical Biology and Medicine (SFRBM; formerly The Oxygen Society) to be held November 17-21, 2004 at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef and Morningstar Resort, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Funds will support travel, lodging, and registration fees of invited speakers so that funds from the SFRBM operating budget and annual meeting income can be directed toward supporting the travel, registration, and participation of students, fellows, and other investigators. The meeting will be preceded by a workshop on Proteomics, Metabonomics, and Genomics of Oxidative Stress, which will provide lectures by experts in the field to young and other interested investigators on the concepts, techniques, and interpretations applied to systems biology of oxidative damage to, and redox regulation of, biological macromolecules. The body of the four-day meeting will then begin, featuring invited plenary lectures in the morning and oral presentations of selected abstracts in three parallel afternoon/evening sessions. The themes of the four plenary sessions are: Redox Homeostasis and Immune Function; Biological and Pathological Consequences of Lipid Oxidation; Oxidative Damage to Nucleic Acids in Cancer and Aging; and Thiol Switching and Molecular Mechanisms of Redox Cell Signaling. As a new feature of this Annual Meeting, the first two plenary lectures on the final day of the conference will be delivered by the recipients of the SFRBM Lifetime Achievement Award and SFRBM Discovery Award. Before the plenary lectures in the morning, the Sunrise Free Radical School will be held, a distinct characteristic of the SFRBM Annual Meetings, featuring senior scientists in the field addressing fundamental aspects of free radical chemistry and biology to an audience of students, fellows, and other interested investigators. The lectures delivered in the afternoon/evening sessions will be selected from abstracts submitted by Society members and non-members at large. Each afternoon/evening session will be chaired by selected young investigators in the field. Abstracts not selected for oral presentation will be presented in three one-day poster sessions. The posters will be open for discussion in the evenings. Overall, SFRBM '04 will address a broad range of research topics related to the diverse roles that reactive oxygen and nitrogen species play in biology and medicine. Research data presented will have a significant impact on our understanding of aging as well as cancer, diabetes, inflammation and immunity, and cardiovascular diseases, and will provide new insights into mechanisms by which antioxidants and therapeutics can be used to help prevent or treat these conditions. The conference provides a forum for exchange of the most recent basic and applied research results in free radical chemistry, biology, and medicine as well as an opportunity for scientists in the field to network and arrange for new collaborations.
