Minutes for the Business Meeting of the
Drug Metabolism Division of ASPET
Monday, April 22^nd 2002, Sheraton, New Orleans

  1. New Officers:

Chairman, Ron Hines introduced the new officers of the Executive Committee, Mike Franklin as President-elect and Tom Kocarek as Secretary/Treasurer-elect and thanked the out-going immediate past-President, Dennis Koop for his hard-work in supporting the best Division within ASPET, i.e., Drug Metabolism. There is a need to appoint another Councilor.  Nominations were taken and biographies will be distributed to the Executive Committee, as they become available.

2. Program Committee:

Deadlines for proposals have changed. They are now due to the Division by February 15,  2003 and to ASPET by March 15, 2003. This decision was made in order to make proposals more timely.  The disadvantage is that the Program Committee will have less time to critique the proposals and receive modified proposals.

3. The (successful) Round Table session between academia and industry was discussed. Dennis Koop and Jeff Stevens will write up a report for DMD and Jim Halpert will write an editorial piece. Mike Franklin suggested putting together a brochure for new graduate students informing them of opportunities for drug metabolism studies in academia and industry. Jim Halpert also suggested that we have a pool of speakers from industry to draw on in order to talk with graduate students. Ron Franklin  was asked if it was possible to get a breakdown on past, present and future hiring figures into Drug Metabolism within Merck.

Ron Hines will draft a proposal for Merck, Lilly, and Pharmacia to consider, as well as including others (Pfizer, Abbott, perhaps others).  If there is an enthusiastic response, the Executive Committee will propose a plan to the ASPET Council.

4. Graduate Student Awards:

The DM Division was asked by Council to submit a written statement (a single paragraph) concerning the way the Graduate Student Best Paper Award was handled. The Secretary/Treasurer elect, David Riddick will do this by May 5^th, 2002.

5. Short Courses:

These were very poorly attended. In a pilot program, the Divisions of Molecular Pharmacology, Neuropharmacology and Drug Metabolism will be approached for proposals, but only one proposal will be taken forward. The Short Course will be free.  It is hoped the course would be linked to one or more of the symposia being offered by the same Division. Two suggestions were made: (i) Genetic Variation of Drug Metabolism and (ii) New Approaches Using Mass Spectrometry for the Analysis of Drug Metabolites.

6. Symposia:

A question was asked about a master list of symposia, not only for EB but also for other organizations, e.g., ISSX. This information might be available on the respective Web sites.

ASPET provided some money for speaker-related expenses.  However, if the Division had other money, it could be used as well.  Once the funds for the Brodie Award endowment have been secured, the Division should look into building this type of reserve.  As a point of clarification, symposium speakers are not paid honoraria but are given money to recompense them for their expenses associated with travel to the meeting.

The Ray Fuller Symposium was running into difficulties.  One suggestion was that every 8 years, each Division would be responsible for organizing this.

Similarly, the Brodie Award is in financial difficulty. It will take $60,000 in order to keep the Award at its current level of funding and the Division has been given until 2004 to come up with the money for an endowment. An ad hoc committee consisting of Ron Hines (Chair), Ron Estabrook, Bettie Sue Masters, and Drag Anders has been formed to administer this campaign.  Some money has been raised already. It was agreed that it was important to show financial involvement from all the members of our Division at which time, donations from more substantial sources, e.g., industry, would be sought. It was noted by Ron Hines that Merck and Co. have already donated substantially to this Award.

A question was raised concerning a tribute to the late Jim Gillette. There are already in existence two awards in Jim’s name for best papers in DMD and a suggestion was made that people might like to give money to the Brodie Award in honor of Jim Gillette. A list of persons donating to the Brodie Award by way of this scheme would be publicized in the Pharmacologist as well as placed onto the ASPET/Drug Metabolism website. A regular postal mailing, as well as one on e-mail, will ask for donations. This was seen as another way to demonstrate the commitment of the individual members of the Drug Metabolism Division to the Brodie Award prior to requesting funds from larger organizations.

7. Miscellaneous:

A discussion was held about a reincarnation of ASPET/ASBNB. Bettie Sue Masters mentioned the difficulty of getting the members to come to meetings but was definitely for a joint programming venture but not in 2003 since ASBMB was already trying a new approach in 2003 by having ten thematic sessions at the EB San Diego meeting (April 11-15, 2003). The idea of including a drug metabolism topic into these themes was aired.  A list of ASBMB themes is shown below:

Theme 1. Molecular Basis of Cell and Development Biology.

Organized by Nahun Sonenberg, McGill Univ.

Theme 2. Glycobiology

Organized by Gerald W. Hart, Johns Hopkins

Theme 3. Lipid Signaling, Metabolism and Transport

Organized by Dennis Voelker, Nat. Jewish

Theme 4. Biological Catalysis

Organized by Tadhg Begley, Cornell Univ.

Theme 5. Metabolism - Pathways and Regulation

Organized by Luciano Rosetti, Albert Einstein Col. Med and Patricia Babbitt,

UCSF

Theme 6. Signaling Pathways

Organized by Natalie Ahn, Univ. of Colorado

Theme 7. Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics

Organized by Patricia Babbitt, UCSF

Theme 8. Protein synthesis, folding and turnover

Organized by Cecile Pickhart, Johns Hopkins

Theme 9. Nucleic acid structure, function and processing

Organized by Michael Dahmus, UC, Davis

Theme 10. Membrane assembly, interaction and transport

Organized by Stephen Wright, UC, Irvine

Ron Hines considered the possibility of contacting these individuals to see if they would consider inclusion of at least one speaker from the Drug Metabolism Division in their theme. This probably should be acted on immediately.  Since Mike Franklin is in charge of the 2004 program, Ron Hines will ask him to take this initiative.

·         Eddie Morgan made a point that some effort should be made to recognize out-going officers. Paul Hollenberg said that this should be done in all Divisions and he will take this proposal to ASPET Council.

·         The observation was made that the joint Drug Metabolism/Toxicology mixer needs to be better advertised.

·         Next EB meeting in San Diego begins on a Friday in order to avoid the festival of Passover.

Respectfully submitted,

Ron Franklin

05/16/02