NIH's fourth Symposium on Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine to be held Oct. 4-5

Advances in tissue engineering and stem cell therapies will be among the research topics discussed during the National Institutes of Health's fourth Symposium on Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine, which will be held Oct. 4-5. More than 30 leading researchers will share insights into the state of the regenerative medicine field.

The event is sponsored by the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health and will take place at Natcher Auditorium on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md.

Highlighted talks and sessions:

• Opening Session, Oct. 4, 8 a.m.: Susan B. Shurin, M.D., acting director of the NHLBI, will deliver the keynote speech to open the symposium. She will be followed by Mahendra S. Rao, M.D., Ph.D., director of the new NIH Center for Regenerative Medicine.
• Translating Stem Cell Biology Toward Therapy, Oct. 5, 8 a.m.: Joseph C. Wu, Ph.D., Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, Calif., will be one of several speakers in this session on the challenges researchers face in converting promising advances to new treatments.
• First Human Use of an Allogeneic, Tissue Engineered Vascular Graft, Oct. 5, 10:45 a.m., Todd McAllister, Ph.D., who is with both St. Joseph's Translational Research Institute, Atlanta, and Cytograft Tissue and Engineering, Inc, Novato, Calif,: Dr. McAllister will discuss an example of tissue engineering that involves creating a tiny scaffolding system to encourage a patient's body to grow a new artery to help improve blood flow to the heart.
• Update on NHLBI Progenitor Consortium, Oct. 5, 1:40 p.m.: This session will feature researchers in the NHLBI's Progenitor Cell Biology Consortium offering updates on their efforts. The consortium involves 18 teams of scientists who are developing the field of stem and progenitor cell tools and therapies.

Talks in this session include:

• Optimizing Cardiovascular Stem Cells for Cardiac Repair and Regeneration, Antonis Hatzopoulos, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.: The presentation will discuss an example of stem cell therapy's promise: helping humans grow new heart muscle tissue to help recover from heart attacks.
• Stem Cell Approaches To Understand Lung Injury Repair and Lung Cancers, Carla Kim, Ph.D., Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School: Dr. Kim will present her laboratory's research on the role of adult stem cells in the repair of lung injuries.