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IBIS News - Letters from the President
Dear IBIS Members,
It is our pleasure, on behalf of the IBIS board, to give you an update on our Association.
The BioIron meeting in beautiful Kyoto was highly successful, with large participation of researchers from all over the world, in a charming atmosphere. Some photos of the event, kindly provided by Prof. Y. Kohgo, have been posted on our website.
IBIS is now embarked on the preparation of the forthcoming meeting to be held in Porto, Portugal, 7-11 June 2009. Under Dr Graça Porto’s guidance the practical organization is already largely completed, and we foresee a well-organised meeting in a delightful site. The beautiful location and the continued flow of new important data in the field of iron metabolism and of iron-related diseases promise a particularly exciting event.
Special emphasis will be placed on the participation of associations of patients suffering from disorders of iron metabolism. It is clear that patient associations have become indispensable partners in our joint efforts towards a better understanding of diseases, a prerequisite for better care and management.
We would like to ask you to encourage your young scientific and medical colleagues to become IBIS members so that our Society continues to grow in parallel with the amazing developments in the science of BioIron.
We have been working to update and improve our website, and to make it an important tool for the BioIron community. The main function of the website is to provide information about the international BioIron-related news and events. We will use it to keep you informed about the progress in organizing the 2009 meeting. We also hope that it will benefit from your own observations, comments and suggestions for further growth of the iron community.
We are especially happy to take the opportunity to express our collective gratitude to Prof. Yutaka Kohgo for having ensured the great success of the 2007 meeting, to the former IBIS board and to our former IBIS President, Prof. Jerry Kaplan, whose outstanding scientific productivity complements his magnetic personality.
Pierre Brissot, President IBIS
Tomas Ganz, President-Elect IBIS
Paolo Arosio, Secretary IBIS
Dear Colleagues,
On behalf of the International BioIron Society (IBIS) it is our great pleasure to invite you to BioIron 2007, which will be held in Kyoto Japan April 1-6. 2007. This conference will follow in the tradition of conferences on Iron Storage and Transport Proteins first held in London in 1973 and of meetings held by the International Association for the Study of Iron Disorders, first held in Frankfurt in 1988. The groups that sponsored these meetings have combined their efforts by forming IBIS, which continues to sponsor international meetings that promote research on iron metabolism.
This meeting is the second biennial conference of IBIS, the first conference sponsored by IBIS was BioIron 2005 held in Prague. Similar to BioIron 2005, BioIron 2007 is being held in a particularly spectacular venue, Kyoto Japan during the cheery blossom season. It is our intention that these meetings provide a venue for discussion of the latest advances in understanding the mechanisms of iron uptake and storage, in understanding how altered or malregulated iron metabolism leads to disease and in identifying new and improved therapies for iron-related disorders.
We hope that new discoveries will be shared and that outstanding problems in the field will be discussed. It is our goal that this meeting will be a “magnet” for advancement of knowledge about the biological and medical roles of iron. To accomplish this goal we plan that many of the platform talks will be chosen from the abstracts to ensure that the latest research is included in the program.
We hope that you will join us in Kyoto for BioIron 2007.
Jerry Kaplan President IBIS
Pierre Brissot Vice President IBIS
September 23, 2005
Dear Colleagues:
It is with both a sense of honor and some trepidation that I submit my first President’s Letter. I am honored to have this opportunity to communicate with you as President of the International BioIron Society (IBIS), a society whose research focus is on iron, a topic to which I have devoted much of my scientific career. The trepidation comes from attempting to meet the high standard established by Antonello Pietrangelo, the first president of our society. Isaac Newton is reported to have said that “a dwarf can see further than a giant, if he stands on a giant’s shoulders.” Antonello was the founding father of IBIS and the society was started in large part because of his enthusiasm and dedication. IBIS and I owe him an enormous debt of gratitude.
Along the same vein, many thanks are due to Prem Ponka. Under his guidance, this was the first BIOIRON meeting convened under the authority of IBIS. BIOIRON 2005 was held in Prague this spring and was an enormous success. Both the science and the city were wonderful. Myself, and others, can attest to the extraordinary effort that Prem and his co-chair Kostas Pontopoulos expended to make this a successful meeting. This was the largest BioIron meeting ever held.
The Society also owes a great debt of gratitude to the sponsors of the meeting, which include: Novartis, the National Institute of Health (US), the Center for Disease Control (US), the Diamond-Blackfan Foundation, Cooley’s Anemia Foundation, ApoPharma, Iron Disorders Institute, Vifor AG Roche Diagnostics GMBH, Sigma-Aldrichs Co., Xenon Pharmaceuticals, EMBO, Vienna Labordiagnostika GMBH, Biochemical Journal. Thanks are also owed the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (FARA) for their support for speakers to attend this meeting. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the Guarant Corporation and, in particular, Kristina Pichanicova, for their efforts in organizing BIOIRON 2005.
Several awards were given at this meeting. The award for the Best Young Scientist, referred to as the President’s Award, went to Dr. Barry Paw for his study that identified a mutation in a mitochondrial transporter as being responsible for microcytic anemia in a mutant zebrafish. This award was graciously provided by Novartis and included an honorarium for $5,000.
An award for the Best Poster in Basic Science was graciously funded by the Biochemical Journal and included an honorarium of $500. This award went to J. H. Cheah, who presented a poster entitled “Dexras 1 regulates transferring-mediated iron trafficking in the brain.”
IBIS also presented an award of $500 for the Best Poster in Clinical Science, which went to Martin Delatycki for a poster entitled “The Healthiron Study: Results from a Pilot Study of Modifiers of HFE.”
The Marcel Simon Award ($1,500) was given to three individuals in recognition of their discovery of hepdicin: Drs. Tomas Ganz, Sophie Vaulont and Olivier Loreal. This award was funded by The Margrit Krikker, M.D. Endowment Fund.
Dr. Margrit Krikker was a strong supporter of the BioIron community as part of her efforts to affect a cure and raise public consciousness about Hemochromatosis. In the past, Dr. Krikker provided financial support for the Marcel Simon Award. Dr. Krikker passed away this year, graciously leaving the majority of her estate to IBIS. Currently, the estate has provided $150,000 and there is an expectation of more support when the estate is finally settled. With the consent of the IBIS Board, the $150,000 has been invested in short-term U.S. Certificates of Deposit (CD’s). These CDs are currently yielding about 3.5% and are completely insured so that they are risk-free. (Thankfully, so I don’t have to have sleepless nights).
Dr. Krikker’s Will has several stipulations. One is that the endowment be used to provide $1,500 to the Marcel Simon Award, which is given every other year. The award will now read “The Marcel Simon Award funded by 'The Margrit Krikker, M.D. Endowment Fund.'" (Dr. Krikker’s first name on many official documents is Margaret but she was also known as Margrit. In her will she stipulated use of the name Margrit for the endowments).
A second stipulation is that every other year grant(s) of up to $5,000 be expended for research. The exact number of grants will be determined by the IBIS Board based on financial returns from the investment of the endowment. The grants will be known as research grants awarded from the “The Margrit Krikker, M.D. Endowment Fund”. The Board and I would like to solicit suggestions as to how we can meet that obligation in the most effective way.
I would also like to thank the departing members of the IBIS Board for their service. These individuals were responsible for helping to make the Prague meeting a success, but perhaps even more enduring, they were responsible for starting and formalizing the BioIron Society.
New members of the board include:
Pierre Brissot, President-Elect
Robert Fleming
Kathryn Robson
Graça Porto
Dr. Yukata Kogho is an Ex-Officio Board Member. Dr. Kogho is head of the local organizing committee for BIOIRON 2007, which will be held Kyoto, Japan, from April 1 - 6, 2007.
The new members of the IBIS Board continue the tradition of both basic and clinical science, reflecting the international nature of IBIS.
Sincerely
Jerry Kaplan, Ph.D.
President, IBIS
 Letter from the President
Antonello Pietrangelo, MD, PhD
Dear Members,
A short note to report on recent activities of IBIS. Our society is growing fast and gathering more and more interest not only from individual scientists and physicians, but also from other societies, health organizations and biomedical companies. The number of IBIS members is steadily increasing, and is now 358. This is an extremely important achievement, but we should not stop there… It is important that each one of us become an IBIS promoter and bring in our society all colleagues and investigators interested in various aspects of iron metabolism and diseases.
BIOIRON 2005: The next IBIS meeting, BIOIRON 2005, will be held in Prague, May 22-27. Headquarter will be the Prague Hilton Hotel. You should be now receiving the announcement from Prem Ponka, chairman of the conference. As promised, there will be a special reduced fee for IBIS members attending the 2005 Prague meeting. Dr. Ponka has been working very hard to set up a very attractive program in a fascinating historical setting in the heart of Europe. Please visit the meeting website at www.bioiron2005.cz for more information. I'm sure we will all enjoy an unforgettable meeting. I’m particularly pleased to also announce that 20 IBIS bursaries covering full accommodation and registration will be granted to selected IBIS trainee members presenting an abstract at the meeting. In addition, a Presidential IBIS travel award will be granted to the best oral presentation… and more to be announced… I remind you that in order to take advantage of all these benefits, good standing with IBIS membership fees will be required for both regular and trainee members. So, check your membership status and if for any reasons you forgot to renew your membership, do it now.
In Prague, election of IBIS board members will also take place. A new president-elect and three new directors will be voted. Members are entitled to nominate themselves or other IBIS members to the different positions available. You can send your nomination by email to info@bioiron.org. A ballot will be prepared and sent to all members prior to the Prague meeting. As we did in 2003, election will take place at the meeting but email votes will also be accepted from non-attending members (in case there will be any...). You will have further information from me on this issue in due time.
The IBIS web page is fully established and maintained through Weiser under the supervision of Greg Anderson. It has been recently improved and we are very proud that the IBIS web site gets thousands of hits per month. It should represent a bonus for members as it has an area restricted to IBIS members. We should all take advantage of this easily accessible tool that facilitates the exchange of news and the interaction between members. As you know, we have implemented the Email Forum Discussion, an important place to exchange ideas, information and, we hope, collaborations among members. IBISNET is fully in place and right now an important discussion on iron gene nomenclature is taking place.
As to the economical situation of IBIS, the closing balance of the Washington BIOIRON 2003 meeting has been extremely positive and because of this and the membership fee input, the present IBIS financial status is definitely satisfactory. This allows us to look very optimistically to the future. You will be updated in Prague by our treasurer, Bob Hider, on IBIS budgets and finances. Once more, we must be grateful to the excellent work done by Tracey Rouault and Victor Gordeuk, chairpersons of the Washington 2003 meeting. We foresee a great scientific success for the 2005 Prague meeting under the chairship of Prem Ponka, and this will also help consolidate our finances and secure our future. Special attention is now being paid to relationships with commercial sponsors and biomedical industries to commit them to our meetings and society’s activities without renouncing our nature and mission. Also, private entities are clearly showing their interest in IBIS and, in this respect, I will hopefully update you very soon with important developments for our society.
At the end, as always, let me remind you that all members should feel free to contact me or any other member of the Board directly or through the IBIS web site. I look forward to your active participation in IBIS activities.
See you all in Prague!
Antonello Pietrangelo, IBIS President
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