Frontiers in Cardiovascular Biology (FCVB), the first scientific meeting ever organised by the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science (CBCS) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), is being held in Berlin this month to provide a new European platform for the exchange of information about cardiovascular science. Professor Axel Pries, Chairman of FCVB 2010, said, “FCVB will be a comprehensive meeting looking at the cutting edge science to expose delegates to the full array of current thinking. It’s needed to maintain and develop the standards of cardiovascular science in Europe.
”FCVB, which will be held at the Anatomy Institute of Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin, will place particular emphasis on the needs of young cardiovascular scientists. “We want to help them explore the scientific landscape and find out where their particular interests lie. This is a make and break stage of their careers. If we can help set them on the right path they’ll be more likely to stay in cardiovascular science,” said Pries. FCVB, which is predicted to attract over 600 attendees, will feature 80 invited talks and over 400 abstracts. Three parallel scientific sessions will run, providing delegates with opportunities to hear the latest developments in their own fields, with time scheduled for the best abstracts to be presented both within the pre-arranged symposia and in two oral award sessions. Highlights include the opportunity to hear world class leaders in their fields deliver key note lectures, with E Marban (Los Angeles, US) talking about stem cells, GA FitzGerald (Philadelphia, US) about drugs, industry and academia, K Alitalo (Helsinki, FI) about the molecular regulation of angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis, N Rajewsky (Berlin, DE) about post-transcriptional gene regulation by small RNAs and RNA binding proteins, and P Libby (Boston, US) about inflammation in atherosclerosis.
The translational component of the programme is designed to make the meeting of great interest also to clinicians. “Advances in cardiology are driven by good interactions between clinicians and basic scientists, with clinicians setting the questions that basic scientists then try to answer. Without their involvement we would be operating in an ivory tower,” said Pries.Commenting on the opportunities the meeting presents for networking, Professor Raffaele De Caterina, chairman of CBCS, said, “Bringing people together should create an explosive cocktail that will help find solutions for many of the challenges we are facing.”