8th International Podocyte Conference
ABOUT THE MEETING
The 8th International Podocyte Conference was held in Bristol in 2010. For the first (and so far only) time, the hospitality included a football match among participants ⚽ Sadly, the score has been lost to the ages!
Three sessions highlighting prizewinning abstracts were moderated by journal editors from Nature Medicine, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Session themes of the conference included:
- A view of the glomerulus
- The glomerular charge barrier; its localisation and the molecules/structures responsible
- Translation and stem cell biology
- Glomerular development and model systems
- Podocytes, the immune system & immunomodulatory drugs
- HIV nephropathy
- Podocyte cytoskeleton and motility
- Podocyte polarity and endocytosis
- Diabetic nephropathy and growth factors
SUMMARY FROM 2010
From the 6-9th June 2010 over 200 delegates from around the world were welcomed to the Council House in Bristol for the 8th International Podocyte conference. The last few years have seen a surge of discoveries in podocyte cell biology demonstrating the crucial role of this cell in the glomerular filtration barrier. This meeting provided an excellent opportunity to review this data and for the presentation of fascinating new cutting edge work. A great deal was packed into the two and a half days with the general tone being one of ground breaking research from whole animal work covering everything from mice and fruit flies to micropuncture in the common mudpuppy, to cell imaging pushed to the limits of resolution and new disease models such as those for membranous nephropathy and minimal change disease.
The conference commenced with a very personal and emotional talk from Wendy Cook who gave a clear picture of the devastating nature of kidney disease to patients and their parents. This talk provided the perfect introduction as to why the assembled delegates were in Bristol and how crucial the research into the biology of the podocyte is to providing an understanding of kidney function in both health and disease. This was followed by a number of talks discussing the structure of the glomerular filtration barrier including movies from Janos Peti-Peterdi which showed the dynamic nature of the podocyte.
An interesting departure was a brainstorming session, chaired by Dr. Simon Satchell, held during the afternoon of day 1 discussing the localization and the molecules/structures responsible for the glomerular charge barrier. Panel members (Dontscho Kerjaschki, Jeff Miner, Hans Vink, Bengt Rippe, Marcus Moeller, Karl Tryggvason, Wilhelm Kriz, and Borje Haraldsson) presented their personal perspectives on the topic before the floor was opened up to questions from the audience.
This lively debate demonstrated that there is still much to be done to understand the physical nature of the filtration barrier!!
The rest of the conference continued in the same exciting vein covering all areas of the cell biology of the podocyte. Highlights included identification of new podocyte protein mutations which lead to disease such as the work on MYH9 in focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) and HIV nephropathy, discovery of soluble urokinase receptor as a circulating factor causing FSGS, splicing switches that lead to the dedifferentiation of the podocyte, and podocyte-like cells in the fruit fly.
Prizes were awarded to abstract presenters Changli Wei, Richard Coward, Marcus Moeller, Hanna Debiec, Alfred Kim, Johannes Schlondorff, Sumant Chugh, Laura New and Ross Cagan.
