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.