MEMO

TO: Reporters, Editors, and Producers
FROM: Seema Kumar and Eve Nichols
DATE: October 21, 1997
RE: Whitehead Symposium 1997 Tackles Infectious Disease A Press Invitation

Infectious diseases, once considered a scourge of the past, have re-emerged as a surprisingly complex and intractable problem. And, unless we remain vigilant and continue to develop new weapons to fight them, microbes will evolve new ways to invade our defenses, says Dr. Gerald Fink, Director of the Whitehead Institute.

A host of microbial enemies currently pose a threat to human health: some, like HIV, are new foes, and others, like tuberculosis, are old adversaries that have re-emerged in more menacing forms. Our best hope for combating these organisms comes in the form of scientific breakthroughs that promise new weapons and a better understanding of the advancing plagues. What are these breakthroughs and what intelligence have researchers gathered about modern plagues? What new weapons have they developed to fight these enemies, and how will these findings benefit the public?

At the fifteenth annual Whitehead Symposium, nearly two dozen of the world's leading experts on infectious diseases will join keynote speakers Dr. Clarence J. Peters of the Centers for Disease Control and Dr. Stanley Falkow of Stanford University School of Medicine to answer these questions, discuss the state of the knowledge in this field, and report the latest results from their laboratories.

When: Sunday, October 26 from 8 to 10:00 p.m.
Monday and Tuesday, October 27 and 28 from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Special Press Luncheon: October 27, 12:30 p.m.

Where: Kresge Auditorium, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on Massachusetts Avenue across from the main entrance of MIT.

Topics range from pathogenesis and resistance to genomics and emerging organisms. The lectures provide the press an opportunity to gain a broad overview of the field and to catch up on the latest advances. You can also catch up with some of the speakers at a special press luncheon we have organized on October 21. If you are interested in attending the luncheon, call us.

A copy of the program is attached. If you would like to attend the keynote addresses, the lectures, and/or the press luncheon, RSVP by 3 p.m., October 24, to Seema Kumar or Eve Nichols at (617) 258-5183. Call us if you need more information. 

INFECTIOUS DISEASE

Whitehead Symposium XV
October 26-28, 1997

Sunday, October 26

Session I
8:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Gerald R. Fink
Welcoming Remarks

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Stanley Falkow
"The New "Face" of Medical Microbiology"

Clarence J. Peters
"Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow"

Monday, October 27

Session II
9:00 am - 12:30 pm

PATHOGENESIS AND RESISTANCE

Chairperson: Staffan Normark

John Mekalanos
"Genetic and Biochemical Interplay of Virulence Factors during Cholera Pathogenesis"

Nathaniel R. Landau
"The Role of CC--Chemokine Receptor 5 in HIV Transmission and Pathogenesis"

Don Ganem
"Human Herpesvirus 8 and the Biology of Kaposi's Sarcoma"

Christopher T. Walsh
"Molecular Basis of Bacterial Resistance to Vancomycin"

Lunch

Session III
2:00 pm - 5:30 pm

HOST-PARASITE RELATIONSHIP

Chairperson: Piet Borst

Patricia Zambryski
"Agrobacterium and Plant Viruses as Probes for Movement of Single Strand Nucleic Acid - Protein Complexes into and between Plant Cells"

Norma Windsor Andrews
"The Role of Signal Transduction and Lysosome Recruitment in Host Cell Invasion by Trypanosomes"

Pascale Cossart
"Interactions of the Bacterial Pathogen Listeria monocytogenes with Mammalian Cells: Bacterial Factors, Cellular Ligands, Signaling"

Guy Cornelis
"The Yersinia Yop Virulon. A New Type of Bacterial Piracy"

Session IV 9:00 am - 12:30 pm

IMMUNITY

Chairperson: Hidde Ploegh

Philippa Marrack
"Managing T Cells"

Richard M. Locksley
"Effector T Cell Development: Making the Right Choice"

Margaret A. Liu
"DNA Vaccines: Preclinical Efficacy and Mechanisms of Immunogenicity"

Louis H. Miller
"Strategies for a Blood Stage Vaccine Against Malaria"

Lunch

Session V 2:00 pm - 5:30 pm

GENOMICS AND EMERGING ORGANISMS

Chairperson: Peter S. Kim

J. Craig Venter
"The Human Genome Project: From Microbes to Man"

Susan L. Lindquist
"The Psi Factor, a Novel Prion-like Genetic Element in Yeast"

James M. Musser
"Molecular Population Genetics of Emerged Bacterial Pathogens"

Frederick Blattner
"Sequencing Bacterial Pathogens"

SPEAKER AFFILIATIONS

Norma Windsor Andrews
Yale University School of Medicine

Frederick Blattner
University of Wisconsin

Piet Borst
Netherlands Cancer Institute

Guy Cornelis
University of Louvain Medical School

Pascale Cossart
Institut Pasteur

Stanley Falkow
Stanford University School of Medicine

Don Ganem
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
University of California, San Francisco

Peter S. Kim
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nathaniel R. Landau
Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center

Susan L. Lindquist
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The University of Chicago

Margaret A. Liu
Chiron Corporation

Richard M. Locksley
University of California, San Francisco

Philippa Marrack
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
National Jewish Medical and Research Center

John Mekalanos
Harvard Medical School

Louis H. Miller
National Institutes of Health

James M. Musser
Baylor College of Medicine

Staffan Normark
Karolinska Institute

Clarence J. Peters
Centers for Disease Control

Hidde Ploegh
Harvard Medical School

Christopher T. Walsh
Harvard Medical School

J. Craig Venter
The Institute for Genomic Research

Patricia Zambryski
University of California, Berkeley

MESSAGE CENTER

Telephone and message boards are located at the registration desk in the lobby of Kresge Auditorium. The symposium telephone number is 617/253-2909, and participants may give out this number to receive messages.

LUNCH

Special Press Luncheon: October 27, 12:30 p.m. at the West lounge in the MIT Student Center. On Tuesday, October 28, lunch will be served at 12:30 p.m. in the MIT Student Center.

SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZERS

Gerald R. Fink, Chairman
Herman Eisen
Paul Matsudaira
John Mekalanos
Hidde Ploegh
Richard Young