Pictured: Researchers and presenters at the conference. Deborah Manog photos.
The 2018 New Frontiers in Cell Death Signaling and Heart Failure meeting has brought experts together from the University of Hawaiʻi (UH), the U.S. Mainland, Canada and Japan this week to exchange new ideas and concepts in the area of cardiac cell death, mitrochondrial biology, autophagy and heart failure. The conference is sponsored by the UH medical school and the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, and supported as well by the medical school’s Center for Cardiovascular Research.
In our short video, we speak with conference co-chairs Dr. Takashi Matsui of the University of Hawai’i and Dr. Lorrie Kirshenbaum of the University of Manitoba.
Heart disease is Hawaiʻi’s leading cause of death; accounting for 18,000 hospitalizations every year. The Centers for Disease Control reports that about half of people who develop heart failure die within five years of diagnosis.
The Cell Death Signaling conference is targeted toward understanding the underlying cause of heart cell death–and how to keep cells from dying. Takashi Matsui, MD, PhD, Associate Chair of the UH Department of Anatomy, Biochemistry & Physiology, is a conference co-chair.
“We focus on a pharmacological agent to stop the cell death. We think it is more conservative but more effective,” said Dr. Matsui. “Safety is most important for the patient that is why this information will be optimal … to find an effective drug.”
Dr. Lorrie Kirshenbaum of the University of Manitoba is also a co-chair of the meeting.
“We’re very excited by this meeting because it’s so new. The material is pretty much right off the bench,” said Dr. Kirshenbaum. “A lot of what we do gets published in medical journals it takes some time to get the message out. The exciting thing about being here is we get the first hot off the press before it’s even published information about what’s coming out,” he said.
More of the conference attendees.
Dr. Kirshenbaum, who heads the Cardiac Gene Biology, Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at St. Boniface Hospital finds the University of Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of Medicine a stimulating atmosphere for the meeting.
“The science here is first-rate, it’s a terrific institution and we are excited to be on its campus,” said Dr. Kirshenbaum.
See photos by Deborah Manog:
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