Abstract
President's message (Amy Patick)
I would like to take this opportunity to wish the society membership a very happy new year and I sincerely hope that the new year brings to all of you happiness, good health and prosperity. The new year always brings growing excitement as the society heads into the final countdown for our annual conference. This year the 23rd conference will be held in San Francisco, CA, USA, and, as in previous years, the program promises to be full of an impressive roster of speakers and topics. You can read more about this in this newsletter, but I will summarize some of the highlights. Again, we will host a Drug Discovery and Development 101 interactive workshop on Sunday afternoon with three highly qualified speakers discussing topics relating to Computational Chemistry (Dr Ken Brameld), Non-Clinical Safety Assessment of Antiviral Therapeutics (Dr Anne Chester) as well as Regulatory Pathways and Strategies (Dr Natalie McClure). We also have two featured mini-symposia, one on ‘Antiviral Drug Resistance’ and the other on ‘Prodrug Chemistry and Antiviral Drug Development’. We are very pleased to include Dr John Martin, CEO of Gilead and a past President of ISAR, who will present the keynote address entitled ‘Progress in the Simplification of HIV Therapy and Future Prospects’ on Sunday evening. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the approval of zidovudine, we are also excited to have as our esteemed plenary speaker Dr Sam Broder, who will present a talk entitled ‘Celebrating AZT! Antiretroviral Drugs: From Bench to Bedside to the World’.
This will be also the last time I officially address the society as I pass the steering wheel over to Dr Joe Colacino. Joe will assume the position of the President following this year's annual meeting. This year we will also elect Dr Colacino's successor to the President Elect position as well as three board seat members. Personally this has been a very exciting 2 years for me as the society, with ample feedback from its membership, has reshaped many of its operations as well as the scientific program for ICAR. Although the society has had its shares of struggles, including a global economy in deep recession and the emergence of an influenza pandemic that threatened the cancellation of our 2009 meeting, we have prevailed. We would not have been able to do this without the support of many individuals too many here to thank, but include the ISAR officers, Board of Directors, Committee Chairs and our sponsors. More importantly, the society would not be where it is today without you, the scientists who continue to pursue career pathways and conduct world-class research in antiviral drug discovery and development and who continue to participate and remain actively involved in the society.
ISAR President: Amy Patick
Corporate sponsors: Elsevier, ImQuest BioSciences, Inc., The International Partnership for Microbicides, Genelabs Technolgies, Inc., NIH, Pfizer, Inc, Idenix Pharmaceuticals, PTC Therapeutics, Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada), Abbott Laboratories, Chimerix, Southern Research Institute, Gilead Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Pharmasset, Inc, Microbiotix, Avexa Ltd., Tibotec, Debiopharm, JCR Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Toyoma Chemical Co., Ltd., Roche Palo Alto, Romark, Vertex, Biota Holdings
Program committee (Bob Buckheit)
The 23rd ICAR will be held in San Francisco, CA, USA, beginning on Sunday, 25 April 2010. This year's meeting will continue the format of last year's highly successful meeting in Miami Beach, but we have made some additional changes that we hope will provide an even more rewarding experience for attendees. The ICAR is primarily focused on new scientific developments in the antiviral field, but equally important are the networking opportunities and maintaining close collaborative relationships among chemists and biologists dedicated to the discovery and development of effective antiviral therapies. The annual meeting helps all of us learn new ways of thinking about the drug development process as well as helping new scientists join our ranks and establish successful careers. Thus, consistent with all of our past ICARs, there will be ample opportunity for everyone to re-establish contacts, make new contacts, meet new scientists working in the field and socialize in a relaxed and open environment. However, based on feedback that the ICAR was too long, this year's meeting will be shorter – the final scientific sessions of the 2010 meeting will conclude on Wednesday afternoon.
Once again, the 23rd ICAR will begin on Sunday afternoon with a session entitled Drug Discovery and Development 101. Continuing the theme of the 2009 meeting, the Drug Discovery and Devlopment 101 session will provide a detailed overview of the drug development process with invited presentations on non-clinical toxicology assessments, regulatory challenges in drug development and the use of computational chemistry in drug discovery. The Drug Discovery and Devlopment 101 session will be a highly interactive and hands-on session with the experts, and we encourage everyone to arrive in San Francisco early enough to attend the session at 2 pm on Sunday afternoon.
Following Drug Discovery and Devlopment 101, our third annual keynote address will be presented by Dr John Martin of Gilead Sciences entitled ‘Recent Progress in the Simplification of HIV Therapy and Future Prospects’ Dr Martin's presentation will begin at 5 pm in the main lecture hall and will be followed by our opening reception.
We are particularly pleased to have a special plenary talk given by Dr Samuel Broder of Celera Genomics entitled ‘Celebrating AZT! Antiretroviral Drugs from Bench to Bedside to the World’. On the 25th anniversary of zidovudine, the society is proud to sponsor this celebratory lecture as well as the publication of a special issue of Antiviral Research, which is also dedicated to the anniversary. A copy of the special issue edited by Jose Este and Tomas Cihlar will be made available to all attendees.
The 23rd ICAR will also once again feature our Shotgun Poster Session. This session received the highest marks in member surveys upon its introduction at the Montreal meeting and we will once again select speakers for this session from among the submitted abstracts presented as posters during the two poster sessions on Monday and Tuesday of the meeting. The Shotgun Poster session will be held on Wednesday afternoon and will be the concluding session of the 23rd ICAR. It is intended to allow an even greater number of ISAR scientists to have an opportunity to present their data at the podium in the main conference hall. Upon acceptance of an abstract for poster presentation, the presenting author will be notified that their abstract might be selected for a 5 min oral presentation. Therefore, we will ask each author to have readily available 3–5 PowerPoint slides in the event their poster is selected for presentation. The Shotgun Poster session will allow the society to bring to the podium those scientists who present data at their posters that the society believes are of significant interest to the community, as well as provide those investigators that are competing for awards in our poster award competition to present their data to the conference.
Asking each oral presenter to also present their work as a poster presentation was a second well-received change to our program introduced in 2008. In Miami last year, we continued this policy and the tradition will continue in San Francisco where the poster sessions will provide additional invaluable discussion time with these authors. For many years, ICAR has included a poster awards competition and this tradition will also continue in 2010. Mark Prichard's team of reviewers is primed and ready to go to work on this year's selection of competitors in ‘graduate student’, ‘post-doctoral fellow’ and ‘young investigator’ categories. Over the past years, the competition has been keenly intense and the program committee is fortunate to have dedicated members willing to serve on this important committee. This year, potential awardees with posters with greatest scientific impact will also be asked to address the audience in our Shotgun Poster session to discuss the importance of their results. The increased emphasis on enhancing the scientific quality of our poster sessions is an important and integral part of the ICAR.
This year's meeting will feature two special mini-symposiums in areas important for consideration to the antiviral field. First, we will hold a mini-symposium dedicated to ‘Antiviral Drug Resistance’ on Monday morning. A second mini-symposium will be held on ‘Prodrug Chemstry and Antiviral Drug Development’ on Wednesday morning. Our annual clinical symposium will be held on Tuesday afternoon.
Hopefully, it is obvious that your society is committed to bringing you the best scientific experience possible at the annual meeting. To this end, the program committee has worked diligently this year to make changes to the annual meeting in response to feedback we have solicited from our membership. We have endeavored to keep the best features of the meeting and add scientific sessions and events, which we believe will heighten the experience of all attendees. As always the society has maintained its commitment to the newest members of the society and to antiviral research by again sponsoring the poster award session and our career breakfast.
A San Francisco cable car with Alcatraz Island in the background
The career breakfasts, initiated by Joe Colacino and now organized by Tomas Cihlar, have become a hallmark of our annual meeting. Attendees can meet with established scientists active in the large pharma, biotech, academia and the government sectors of antiviral research to discuss scientific careers. There is no additional fee for the career breakfasts but since space for these meetings is limited, attendees should express their interest in attending a session when registering for the 23rd ICAR.
Lastly, we hope that your attendance at the 23rd ICAR will also allow time for you to explore San Francisco and surrounding areas of the Pacific Coast. All ICAR functions will be held at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco and further information on the meeting or San Francisco sightseeing activities will be available from Courtesy Associates. Shopping, dining and sightseeing opportunities abound in the vicinity of the hotel.
The society sincerely looks forward to welcoming you to San Francisco for the 23rd ICAR in April and hopes you will join us and experience ICAR 2010.
Financial summary (Dale Barnard)
Owing to some excellent negotiating on the part of Courtesy Associates (our conference organizer), the meeting in Miami did not lose money for the society despite the world's economic downturn and the ‘swine flu’ scare. The hotel was willing to compromise on our room nights quota and some other things. Thus, we actually were $27,982 below our estimated costs for the meeting. When the meeting costs for the Miami meeting and other costs from throughout the year of 2009 were subtracted from the income generated in the year 2009, the society had balance of $28,446.
The society is in good financial shape entering into the year 2010. Whatever funds we have accrued over the years or saved have been invested in secure CDs (means low yield interest rates, but low risk) or other secure investments. The management of our funds, due in part to our fiscally conservative approach to meeting management, should allow us to be able to hold meetings in Europe or in the US without too much fear of losing all of our assets with the following caveats: the pharmaceutical industry continues their excellent support of our society and our annual meetings; we continue to maintain membership in ISAR and attendance levels at ICAR at least as they were in 2009; and the society continues to execute fiscally conservative approaches to meeting management.
International Society for Antiviral Research Financial Statement for 2009
Society election update (Andrea Brancale)
For many years, the Officers and Members of the Board of Directors of the society were elected using standard paper ballots that you sent in to be counted. In 2007, we moved from the paper-based system to an email-based system, which not only decreased the administration aspects of the process and the cost but also has seen an increase of almost 20% of voting members. In 2009 we changed again for a web-based system, hosted on an external server. The positive response for the latter method encouraged us to develop a dedicated voting website on the society server for the 2010 election, with individual member accounts.
We welcome your feedback on this new system.
23rd International Conference on Antiviral Research (25–27 April 2010)
For the first time, there will be a discount (additional to the advance discount) for staying at the meeting hotel, the Hyatt Regency, San Francisco. The discount deadlines are 25 March for advanced registration discount and hotel discount; 26 March to 2 April for hotel discount only.
San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge
Please note that non-member registrants automatically become ISAR members for the duration of the membership year. The fee for accompanying persons includes daily continental breakfast, opening reception, and conference banquet.
Visit the ISAR website at http://www.isar-icar.com to discover more about the 23rd ICAR, such as hotel accomodation, abstract submissions and program. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the ISAR/ICAR Office at 202-973-8690 or by e-mail at
Information on the 24th ICAR, Sofia, Bulgaria, 8–11 May 2011, will be posted on the ICAR website by August 2010.
Calendar (Simon Tucker)
11–14 March 2010
Taiwan
24–26 March 2010
Marseille
7–11 April 2010
Lake Como, Italy
http://www.eurovirology2010.org/
25–27 April 2010
San Francisco
http://isar.phrm.cf.ac.uk/node/8
28–29 April 2010
San Diego
http://www.drugdiscoverychemistry.com/dch/hcv
23–25 May 2010
Miami
www.iapac.org/AdherenceConference/AdherenceConf2009-info.html
23–27 May 2010
San Diego
21–25 June 2010
Belgium
11–14 July 2010
Atlanta, Georgia
24–25 July 2010
Boston, USA
31 July–3 August 2010
South Korea
www.bitlifesciences.com/wcvi2010
2–7 September 2010
Hong Kong
www.isirv.org/events/index.cfm?key=Options-for-the-Control-of-Influenza-VII&table=event&xobj=100027
12–15 September 2010
Boston
20–25 September 2010
Whistler, BC
http://www.keystonesymposia.org/Meetings/ViewMeetings.cfm?MeetingID=1031
7–9 November 2010
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
http://www.antivirals.elsevier.com/
ISAR News is a publication of the International Society of Antiviral Research, prepared by the ISAR Publications Committee: Hugh J Field (Chair), Masanori Baba, Erik De Clercq, Colleen B Jonsson, Luis Schang, Donald F Smee, Ashoke Sharon, Simon Tucker and Anthony Vere Hodge.