Functional Genomics and Disease 2003,
Prague, Czech Republic

photos: opening | ESF dinner | Day 3 | Day 4 | Brewery Party

Our first major biennial conference, Functional Genomics and Disease 2003, was held at the Hilton Hotel in Prague, May 14-17th 2003. The theme of the conference was chosen to illustrate the growing importance of functional genomics research for understanding disease mechanisms and development of new therapies. A local organising committee was chaired by Vaclav Paces (Institute of Molecular Genetics, Prague) and an International Programme Committee was chaired by Mike Taussig (Babraham Institute, Cambridge). Altogether, the conference invited 77 distinguished speakers and chairpersons and was attended by a further 500 delegates who presented over 300 posters.

The opening ceremony was addressed by ESF Secretary General Enric Banda, the Mayor of the city of Prague Pavel Bern, the Deputy Minister of Education Petr Kolar, and the ESF representative for the Czech Republic Josef Syka, as well as by Vaclav Paces and Mike Taussig. Other members of the ESF governing council and the LESC and EMRC committees attended. The EC was represented by Manuel Hallen, Head of Fundamental Genomics at the Directorate for Health Research, who also gave a talk later on the 6th Framework Programme. Plenary lectures at the opening were given by Leena Peltonen (Helsinki) and Hans Lehrach (Berlin). The Prague Castle band provided musical entertainment before a welcome reception.

The conference layout comprised plenary sessions, parallel morning symposia on specific disease areas and parallel afternoon workshops on functional genomics technologies. In addition to those mentioned, the plenary speakers were Ian Dunham (Hinxton), Mathias Uhlen (Stockholm), Jurg Ott (New York), Kelly Frazer (Mountain View), Klaus Lindpaintner (Basel), Jan van Oostrum (Basel) and Georg Feger (Geneva). The symposium topics covered a wide range and included Infection and Host/Parasite Interaction, Hereditary Disease, Oncology, Mitochondrial Diseases, Complex Diseases, Neurological Disease, and Pharmacogenomics and Drug Discovery. The workshop topics reflecting high throughput technologies were Model Systems and Knockout, Transcriptome, Proteome and Protein-protein Interactions, Bioinformatics, Cell and Gene Therapy, and Advances in Microarrays. In addition there was a session on Biobanking, Intellectual Property and Ethics, and a half-day workshop on Environmental Genomics organised by Victor de Lorenzo (Madrid). A pre-conference symposium was held by Waters and a number of companies held lunchtime information sessions (Applied Biosystems, Invitrogen, Affymetrix, LION Bioscience and IBM, Beckman Coulter and Thermo Electron Corporation).

In addition to funding from the ESF functional genomics programme, the conference received generous sponsorship from Roche Diagnostics, Invitrogen, Novartis and Serono and further funds were raised from the associated commercial exhibition in which 23 companies participated. These sources helped to subsidise the registration fee and keep it at a very reasonable level, with special rates for young researchers. The event was managed by a local conference organising company, Czech-In. The ESF programme provided 50 bursaries for young researchers selected on quality of posters. The main social event was an evening party at the Staropramen Brewery in Prague and there was a post-conference excursion to the exhibition on 'Mendel: The Genius of Genetics' at Mendel's Abbey near Brno.

The conference was a major event which brought the ESF functional genomics programme to the attention of a wide, international audience. Comments during and after were extremely positive and enthusiastic, with many pleasing remarks on the excellence of the presentations. It was deemed a high profile success at all levels, from organisation to science, and many attendees expressed the hope that we would organise a similar event. The current intention is to do so in 2005.