2008/07/16

International experts in alcoholism and cirrhosis are to meet in Bilbao on 17 and 18 July

The third International Symposium on Alcoholic Liver and Pancreatic Diseases (ALPD) and Cirrhosis will be held in Bilbao on 17 and 18 July. This prestigious event is being organized by CIC bioGUNE, CIBERehd -Networked Bio-medical Research Centre for Hepatic and Digestive Diseases-, the ALPD Research Center of the University of Southern California/University of California, Los Angeles (USC/UCLA) and by the University of Southern California (USC) Cirrhosis Research Center.

The scientific committee in charge of organizing the symposium is made up of Prof. Dr. José M Mato, Director General of CIC bioGUNE; Prof. Dr. José C. Fernández-Checa of the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, CIBERehd, IDIBAPS and Barcelona Bio-medical Research Institute; Prof. Dr. Shelly C. Lu of the ALPD Research Center, Los Angeles; and Prof. Dr. Stephen Pandol, Associate Director of the ALPD Research Center of Los Angeles and Professor of the UCLA.

The event programme includes special lectures and plenary sessions in which some of the greatest authorities in this field at international level will take part. Amongst the prominent participants will be Dr. Kenneth R. Warren, Deputy Director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which forms part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States; and Prof. Dr. Scott L. Friedman, Chief of the Division of Liver Diseases at the prestigious Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

At the conference 36 international speakers will come together to exchange the latest advances in the field of diseases associated with alcohol abuse. Some of the topics covered will be ALPD disease mechanisms; cell death and cancer; clinical research; and bio-markers of ALPD diseases and cirrhosis.

The symposium will be held on 17 and 18 July at Bilbao's Hesperia Zubialde Hotel. The first Symposium was held in Los Angeles in 2006, and the second in Kobe (Japan) last year.