May 5-6, 2003 Waltham (Boston)
Doubletree Guest Suites, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA

Post Meeting Report

Nearly 200 people attended this two-day meeting on “RNAi-2003-Boston” meeting. Participants gathered from several countries (representations from all the continents except South America) that include: Germany, France, Netherlands, Finland, South Africa, Singapore, Canada and Japan. Twenty-five scientists from academia, biotech and pharma had presented the cutting-edge results in the emerging RNAi field (see pictures). Approximately 15 posters (see pictures) presented and 10 vendors exhibited their tools, reagents and software exclusively in the RNAi field (see pictures).

Several graduate students and post-docs came from institutions like Yale, Cleveland Clinic, University of Texas, Harvard, University of Illinois, National Institute of Advanced Science and Technology of Japan and Whitehead Institute of MIT. Professors attended from Yale, University of South Florida, Dartmouth, Harvard, Tokyo University, University of Kuopio of Finland, Medical College of Georgia, University of Massachusetts Medical School and Texas A&M University. Scientists from National University of Singapore, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Health, Max Plank Institute, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center were also participated.

Scientists from pharmaceutical giants such as Biogen, Genzyme, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Aventis Pharmaceuticals, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and Boehringer Ingelheim were also attended. Several research staff attended from the local hospitals including: Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Not to say, executives from top four instrument and reagent companies such as Applied Biosystems, Amersham Biosciences, PerkinElmer and Agilent technologies were participated.

The lectures started from basic biology of RNAi then slowly progressed to address applications in target validation, drug and therapeutic development (see the GenomeWeb reports). High through put RNAi analysis was discussed in detail by three investigators. Finally, the meeting concluded with an hour of panel discussion with venture capitalists, technology transfer officers, executive officers, technology directors and journalists. The panel discussion provided an open and jovial environment for scientists to communicate and discuss on several issues such as patents, technology hurdles, and raising money.

Most of the participants were highly satisfied with the quality of lectures (see the surveys) and commented as a “well organized meeting with excellent speakers and heavily loaded with information in the RNAi field.”

In nutshell, participants hailed this meeting as “the best RNAi meeting ever held in the field” (see the testimonials).

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Highlights of the Meeting:

The biology of RNAi and siRNA
Innovative tools for design, synthesis and transfection
RNAi in vivo, in vitro and in ovo delivery
Retroviral based new cloning vectors for RNAi delivery
Large-scale RNAi platform for genome-wide high through put screenings
RNAi as a tool to understand phenome, transcriptome and interactome
RNAi as a method to understand protein-protein interactions and signaling pathways
High throughput RNAi microarrays for cell based transfections
RNAi is a novel strategy to develop anti-viral (HIV, HCV) therapeutics
Drug validation and development of anti-cancer and therapeutic molecules
Applications in C. elegans, mammalian and other systems.

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