Rancho Mirage, California. - Dr. Paul Robertson, CEO and Scientific Director of the Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI, now PNDRI) in Seattle, opened the 3rd Annual Annenberg Symposium on Islet Transplantation last week. Robertson, one of the world's leading diabetologists, helped found the symposium three years ago and continues to serve as its program chair. This year's program included an international roster of scientists and surgeons reporting on the clinical and basic science of islet transplantation, today's most promising therapy for type 1 diabetes.

The symposium, which ran from Thursday, December 4th through Saturday, December 6th, was entitled "The Clinical and Basic Science of Islet Transplantation." It was hosted by the Annenberg Center for Health Sciences at Eisenhower. Participants discussed the evolution of islet transplantation, the results of current studies, the innovative directions of this new technology, and the challenges facing researchers as they work to make it an even more effective clinical practice.

The virtues of such a meeting are great, Robertson says. It brings scientists and clinicians together to promote each other's work. "The way we set up this conference was to begin with the basic nuts and bolts issues and then get progressively more clinical." And such interactions between laboratory researchers and surgeons, physicians, nurses, and other clinical professionals are very rich. "They spawn new projects," Robertson says, "new ideas, and potentially new cures."

Speakers at this year's conference reported the latest news about short and long-term outcomes of islet transplantation, about how to improve islet isolation and assessment, about what further clinical trials need to be conducted, about who the best patient candidates are for islet transplantation, and about how "success" in this developing therapy should be defined.

Program participants attended from many research centers including Harvard, Vanderbilt, Chicago, the University of Alberta in Canada, from transplant sites in Sweden, England, and Italy, and from the National Institutes of Health. It is a privilege, Robertson says, to coordinate such a scientific meeting because of the "unusual and fruitful professional contact it allows."