Please click here for more info and note the deadlines for registration and travel awards below.

www.keystonesymposia.org/11T1

Global Health Travel Award Application Deadline: June 7, 2011 / Scholarship & Abstract Deadline: July 11, 2011 / Late-Breaking Abstract Deadline: August 10, 2011 / Early Registration Deadline: September 7, 2011

The NIDDK workshop on Translation Approaches for Pharmacotherapy Development for Acute Diarrhea is being held to identify new translational research opportunities for the development of new pharmacologic agents to treat acute diarrhea in adults and in children. The workshop will bring together investigators to discuss the current understanding and challenges of acute diarrhea treatment, the pathogenesis of acute diarrhea and the pathophysiologic mechanisms involved. The workshop will also encompass translational approaches now being used and prospective approaches that may be developed to target common pathophysiologic mechanisms.

Click here for more info http://www3.niddk.nih.gov/fund/other/AcuteDiarrhea/index.htm

The 2nd Annual MAL-ED Meeting was held from June 17 – 19, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Bethesda hotel in Bethesda, MD, USA. The meeting was a great success and in attendance were over 70 MAL-ED Consortium members from Africa, Asia and the Americas. Since the project is now underway in all eight sites, there was significant discussion about the implementation of harmonized protocols, lessons learned at various sites, and potential future projects.

The annual MAL-ED meetings involve scientific personnel and field staff from Tanzania, South Africa, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Peru and Brazil who, due to geographic limitations, rarely have the opportunity to meet with each other face-to-face and work on standardized protocols together at one location. Similar to the kickoff meeting in February 2009, this meeting provided a chance for all the technical subcommittees to work with each other and to exchange ideas about and experiences in the project. The three day meeting was intensive, with presentations from the Principal Investigators at all eight sites, as well as collaborating researchers and technical subcommittee heads. For more detailed discussion, the Chairs of the technical subcommittees– Gut Function, Nutrition, Vaccine Response, Data Management, Cognitive Development, Microbiology, and Surveillance– met with representatives from each site in breakout sessions. There were three main goals of these sessions: addressing any unresolved issues that have arisen since the start of the project, discussing quality control measures to be implemented at each site, and presenting to the Consortium the status of each committee’s progress at this point in the project.

The MAL-ED Scientific/ Administrative Core would like to thank all the participants for their invaluable contributions to the success of this year’s meeting.

Eric Houpt (UVa) spoke about the development of new tools for analyzing the pathogen make-up of stool. Richard Guerrant (UVa) spoke about the effects of malnutrition and repetititve bouts of diarrheal disease on cognitive development. Laura Caulfield (JHSPH) ended the session by describing the importance of micronutrients for young children at risk of both malnutrition and diarrheal disease in developing countries.

Scientific issues related to the MAL-ED project were featured at the ASTMH meeting’s basic science course on November 17th entitled:

The Intersection of Nutrition and Infectious Disease:

Challenges and Opportunities for Studying Nutrition – Disease Interactions in the Developing World

For many members, this meeting was the first opportunity to meet fellow collaborators from the other research sites. Previous to meeting in person, technical subcommittees from the project had been working on standardized protocols remotely. This meeting provided a chance for all the technical subcommittees to work with each other one on one.

Everyone agreed that while this was a celebration of the start of an exciting project, it was no vacation. When members were not listening to talks from the Principal Investigators of the Tanzania, South Africa, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Peru and Brazil sites or listening to the heads of the technical subcommittees explaining their progress and obstacles, they were breaking off into working groups to put the finishing touches on the many protocols and forms that make up a project of this size and scope.

We hope everyone made it back to their home destinations safely and look forward to the start of the cohort enrollment process by year’s end!

• Further the development of a strong, interactive multi-institutional and multi-site network collaborating on a shared vision and plan of addressing the scientific questions and issues raised in the proposal.
• Finalize the shared and harmonized protocol that will be form the basis for project activities at he different sites.
• Develop the plans for implementing the protocol at the different sites.
• Identify and codify the policies and procedures by which participants in the Network and Consortium will operate.
• Determine how the companion Discovery projects will coordinate activities with those of the Network.

Agenda will include:

• Launch of program with BMGF and Steering Committee members, Technical Committee heads, Site PIs, and other site representatives
• Scientific Board and Bioethics Board meeting
• Time for discussion/finalizing SOP, manuals, forms for planned IRB submission