The third “Exciting Biologies” meeting focuses on “Biology In Balance”

Oct 12 2009

In a continuing series called “Exciting Biologies” Cell Press, Massachusetts General Hospital and La Fondation Ipsen collaborate to offer annual meetings designed to highlight emerging intersections in biomedical research and promote interactions between scientists from converging disciplines. This third meeting, held in Buenos Aires between the 8^th and 10^th of October, focused on “Biology in Balance”. It drew together scientists studying various aspects of homeostasis and balance from a diverse range of approaches and disciplines. Homeostasis, a state of balance in the body, actively maintained by complex biological mechanisms is well known in physiology. Thanks to modern biology, the various cellular processes involved in balance are now identified. This third meeting of the “Exciting Biologies” series examined the concept of balance and system robustness and how balance and homeostasis are established and maintained within a cell, tissue, organism, or population. Topics of the various lectures included the mechanisms that maintain balance, how systems adjust balance, how balance can be tipped, and what happens when balance is lost. The meeting was organized by Kenneth R. Chien (Massachusetts General Hospital, USA), Emilie Marcus (Cell Press, USA), Connie M. Lee (Cell Press, USA), Marie Z. Bao (Cell Press, USA), Elena Porro (Cell Press, USA) and Yves Christen (La Fondation Ipsen, France).

In 2007, Cell Press, Massachusetts General Hospital and La Fondation Ipsen came together to create a new series of scientific events: the “Exciting Biologies” – three-day meeting – highlighting some of the most dynamic sectors in biological and medical research. The second meeting in 2008 discussed a particularly current topic: the biology of cognition.

The success of the meetings is derived from the combination of excellent diverse speakers: Sebastian Amigorena (Institut Curie, France), Shelley Berger (Wistar Institute, USA), Dominique Bergmann (Stanford University, USA), Hans Clevers (Hubrecht Institute, Netherlands), Ivan Dikic (Goethe University, Germany), Michael Elowitz (California Institute of Technology, USA), Oliver Hobert (Columbia University, USA), Juergen Knoblich (Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, Austria), Roberto Kolter (Harvard Medical School, USA), Alberto Kornblihtt (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina), Beth Levine (UT Southwestern Medical Center, USA), James Lupski (Baylor College of Medicine, USA), Diane Mathis (Harvard Medical School, USA), Richard Morimoto (Northwestern University, USA), Jodi Nunnari (University of California-Davis, USA), Paolo Sassone-Corsi (University of California-Irvine, USA), Alejandro Schinder (Leloir Institute, Argentina), Pamela Silver (Harvard Medical School, USA) and Juleen Zierath (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden).

Source: La Fondation Ipsen