Minutes: Executive Committee Meeting/Business Meeting, ASPET Division for Toxicology, April 20, 2009
Present: Drs. Curt Omiecinski, Curt Farris, Wayne Backes,
Qiang Ma and Mary Vore. Dr. Vore presided.
1) The
new officers are Chair–elect: Dr. John Schuetz;
Secretary/Treasurer-elect, Dr. Courtney Sulentic.
2) The Division sponsored 4 Symposia in 2009:
a. Generating proteomic diversity in xenobiotics biotransformation
with alternative RNA splicing. Chair: Curt J. Omiencinski
b. The role of nuclear receptors in lipid homeostasis. Chair,
Jean-Marc Pascussi and CJ Omiecinski
c. The Nrf2-Keap1 system: An emerging key regulator in the
defense against oxidative stress, chemical toxicity and disease. Chair: Qiang
Ma and Masayuki Yamamoto. This was the Toxicology Division Symposium
d. Exposure to environmental agents alters epigenetic homeostasis.
Chairs: Max Costa and Mary Vore
These were well-attended, and the speakers were excellent.
3) Two symposia sponsored by the Toxicology Division have
been approved by the Program Committee for presentation in 2010:
a. Role of mitochondria in pathogenesis of drug
hepatotoxicity – Developed
by Dr. Neil Kaplowitz
b. Regulating the Regulators: Redox regulation,
stress response proteins and apoptosis – Developed by Dr. Daret St.
Clair
A third symposium sponsored by the Division will be developed
by Dr. John Schuetz as Chair-elect.
4) The
First Place winner of the Student abstract awards was Warren J Huber III
with the abstract entitled: Measurement of membrane-bound human heme oxygenase-1
activity using a chemically defined assay system. His award is $500. The
second place winner was: Wei Zou, with the abstract entitled: Sulindac metabolite
and TNFα interaction in liver injury induced
by sulindac and lipopolysaccharide in rats. His award is $300. No Postdoc
awards were given due to insufficient submission of quality abstracts. (Only
two abstracts were submitted;one did not show up to present, and one was
mistakenly sent to a different Division prior to the poster competition.)
Significant efforts are needed to generate more submissions in the Student
and Postdoc categories. One approach will be for officers to contact colleagues
who are Division members and urge them to have their trainees send an abstract
for this competition. If sufficient abstracts were submitted, the Division
could develop a platform session to showcase the work. The Drug Metabolism
Division has successfully developed such a platform session.
5) Qiang Ma has spent considerable effort on developing
and upgrading the Division web-site, which is very informative and timely.
A summary of the EB meeting will be posted to the website. The Division now
pays the ASPET web-site an annual fee to maintain the website.
6) ASPET sent Suzie Thompson from the ASPET office to this
year’s SOT meeting, which was held in Baltimore, to set up a booth to advertise
ASPET and the Division for Toxicology. Suzie was positively impressed with
the amount of interest she attracted, even from SOT members. The expenses
were minimal due to its location near Bethesda. The group discussed the wisdom
of having a “mixer” or reception sponsored by the Division at the SOT meetings
to generate more membership and interest in the Division. However, the group
felt that there are already too many such mixers/receptions at SOT, and that
the expense would not likely be worth it. The Division asked how much ASPET
would be willing to spend to continue this activity at SOT meetings.
The meeting concluded.