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2008 System Biology
Organisation
Nobel Foundation in collaboration with European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE) and Nature Medicine
Organizing committee
Kerstin Albertsson Wikland
Per-Olof Berggren
Franco Chiarelli
Ze'ev Hochberg
Martin Ritzén
Randy Levinsson (Nature Medicine)
When Where
May 15-17 2008, Krusenberg, Sweden
Conference organizer
SemSer-Seminar Service
e-mail: sten.renstad@semser.se
Scientific correspondence
Martin Ritzén
e-mail: martin.ritzen@ki.se
Program: Nobel Conference on Systems Biology and Child Health
Comments from Professor Martin Ritzén about the conference:
In recent years, it has become increasingly evident that we are coming close to the end of the road that leads to identification of disease mechanisms through conventional strategies; searching for isolated factors that cause a specific disease may be fruitful for yet a number of rare, mostly inherited problems, but for most common diseases there is a multifactor background. The new methodologies of Systems Biology (e.g. genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc.) may help to identify and describe such complex disease-causing networks, intracellular as well as systemic.
With this in mind, the Medical Nobel Assembly, in collaboration with ESPE, arranged a threee day conference on Systems Biology at a convenient rural venue outside Stockholm. The aim was to bring together ESPE clinical scientists in the fields of child obesity, diabetes and growth and top scientists in basic research, experts in the various methodologies of Systems Biology. Although the Nobel conferences are closed and limited to invited active presenters, the conference was announced to ESPE members 6 months ahead, inviting
young fellows in paediatric endocrinology from ESPE countries to compete for ten ESPE travel grants by submitting an abstract and poster on the topics of the meeting. Their posters that were displayed throughout the meeting were discussed with the clinical and basic scientists.
The clinical scientists gave brief presentations of their fields (obesity, growth and diabetes) and the most important outstanding questions to be answered. This was followed by presentations by the basic scientists, with suggestions on how their methods could be used to solve the problems of the clinicians. Personally, I was astound by the capacity of the new methodologies. An example: Within a few years, all human proteins are expected to be identified, cloned, synthesised by recombinant techniques and mapped by immunohistochemistry in 20 different human tissues!
The proceedings of the conference will be published as two separate papers in Nature Medicine at the end of this year. One will give overviews of the topics covered, the other one will be a white paper, with suggestions on how the new methodologies can help clinical scientists in their efforts to better help children with diabetes, obesity or growth problems in a better way. Video recordings of most of the lectures can be downloaded from the web address above (http://www.qenter.se/stream/nobel/ ).
I thank my co-workers in the organising committee Zeev Hochberg (chairman), Kerstin Albertsson-Wikland, P-O Berggren, Franco Chiarelli and Randy Levinson (Nature Medicine) for their devoted work with the conference and the publications.
Martin Ritzén
