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Speaker Biographies Maria Luisa Bianchi graduated in Medicine in 1979
and specialized in Nephrology in 1982 at the University of Milano, Italy.
From 1982 she worked at the First Medical Clinic, University of Milano,
and from 1996 at the Bone Metabolism Unit of the Istituto Auxologico Italiano
IRCCS. She has been a professor of Uremic Osteodistrophy and Diagnosis
of Nephrologic Diseases at the University of Milano. Heike Bischoff-Ferrari, MD, MPH, has a Swiss National Foundation
Professorship and is Head of Clinical Research at the Department of Rheumatology
and Institute of Physical Medicine at the University of Zurich. She is
also a Visiting Professor at the Bone Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean
Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University
in Boston, USA. Following completion of her MD in Basel Switzerland, she
went on to take her Masters and Doctoral in Public Health at Harvard University
in Boston. Her research focus is on the prevention of falls and fractures
in the elderly and musculoskeletal effects of vitamin D. Dennis Black is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco; a position he has held since 1987. He received his doctorate in biostatistics from the University of California, Berkeley. Professor Black pursues a strong research interest in the area of osteoporosis and particularly in the design and direction of clinical trials. Professor Black’s accomplishments in this area are numerous and include large, pivotal, studies such as the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (SOF), the Fracture Intervention Trial of alendronate (FIT), and the MORE trial involving raloxifene. He is the principal investigator for the FIT Long Term Extension (FLEX) trial recently published in Journal of the American Medical Association and is the lead author for the HORIZON fracture trial of zoledronic acid recently published in New England Journal of Medicine. In addition he is the principal investigator for the NIH-funded PTH and alendronate (PaTH) trial involving PTH (1–84). Professor Black has written over 200 peer reviewed publications in prestigious journals and has lectured widely on osteoporosis. Laura Calvi is Assistant Professor of Endocrinology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Rochester, New York. She completed her MD at Harvard Medical School in 1995. She trained in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she also completed her fellowship and postdoctoral work in Endocrinology, focusing specifically on parathyroid hormone and stem cell biology. Her work has used genetically altered mouse models to define the role of parathyroid hormone in osteoblastic cells and study the regulatory relationship of osteoblastic cells with hematopoietic stem cells. Her current research interests include the cellular and molecular mechanisms of osteoblastic regulation of hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow microenvironment. Dr Philippe Clézardin is Research Director at INSERM (National Institute for Health and Medical Research) and head of the INSERM Research Unit 664. After being awarded a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Lyon (1983), he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Medical Research Council/Scottish National Blood Transfusion Centre in Edinburgh, UK (1984-1986). He then specialized in research on cancer and hemostasis at the General Hospital in Ottawa, Canada, and Edouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon, France (1990-1991), and he obtained his DSc from the University of Lyon (1991). For the past ten years, Dr Clézardin focused his research interest on the mechanisms of bone metastasis formation of breast and prostate cancers, with the goal of producing new anticancer therapies. Since January 2007, he is Director of the Research Institute “IFR62” entitled: “Cancer, Nutrition and Metabolism”, which represents thirteen laboratories and 530 people. Dr Clézardin has authored about 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals such as Cancer Research, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and contributed to about 15 chapters in textbooks on cancer research. Robert Coleman is Professor and Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist at the Cancer Research Centre at Weston Park Hospital in Sheffield, Director of the Cancer Research Centre in Sheffield, and the Research Lead for the North Trent Cancer Research Network in England. Professor Coleman's research interests include cancer-induced bone disease and developments in the management of breast cancer. He is Chairman of the National Cancer Research Institute Breast Cancer Study Group in the UK, and President of the Cancer and Bone Society. Juliet Compston is Professor of Bone Disease and Honorary Consultant Physician at Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine. She obtained her medical degree at the Middlesex Hospital, London University, with a distinction in Medicine. Professor Compston is actively involved in research into metabolic bone disease. Her main interest is the cellular and structural pathophysiology of bone loss associated with osteoporosis and the effects of drugs on these changes. Current research interests also include the effects of glucocorticoids in bone and the role of megakaryocytes in bone remodelling. Professor Compston is currently a Member of the Board of the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) and a Board member of the International Bone and Mineral Society. She is Leader and Chair of the European Commission / IOF Call to Action for Osteoporosis, a Trustee of the Medical Board of the National Osteoporosis Society (NOS) and serves on the MHRA Expert Advisory Group on Women’s Health. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and serves on the editorial board of Bone, Osteoporosis International and the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. She is a member of the Osteoporosis Guidelines Development Group for the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE). Dr Cummings is an internal medicine specialist and expert in the epidemiology and treatment of osteoporosis. He has led large studies of osteoporosis, including the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures and the MrOS study of the causes and consequences of osteoporosis. He has also played a lead role in the FIT trial of alendronate, MORE trial of raloxifene, Horizon trial of zoledronate, LIFT trial of tibolone among other studies. He serves on the Boards for the International Osteoporosis Foundation and the International Bone and Mineral Society and was elected to the US Institute of Medicine for his clinical research in osteoporosis. Dr Diez-Perez is Head of the Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Hospital del Mar and Professor of Medicine at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. MD and PhD from the University of Barcelona. A specialist in internal medicine by the Autonomous University of Madrid, he has been the president of the Spanish Society of Bone Research and Mineral Metabolism and current vice-president of the Spanish Society of Osteoporotic Fractures. He is member of the Committee of Scientific Advisors of the International Osteoporosis Foundation. Has served as advisor of the WHO, the Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias (FIS) and Eli Lilly. Dr Diez-Perez was a visiting scientist at Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, and has been member of the Council of the ECTS. He belongs to the IBMS, ECTS, ASBMR and the Spanish and European Societies of Internal Medicine. He is author or co-author of more than 125 journal articles and 350 abstracts with a special focus on the field of osteoporosis. He is involved in research projects on epidemiology, regulation of bone cells and genetics of the osteoporosis. Following her PhD at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (UAM) Spain in 1993, Dr. Dominguez undertook postdoctoral research at the University of Zurich, where her research focused on cell signalling and pattern formation in the retina of Drosophila. In 1997, she moved to UK and joined the Peter A. Lawrence’s group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where she worked on mechanisms of growth control and pattern formation using Drosophila eye as a model. During these years, Dr. Dominguez published seminal papers on the role of Hedgehog, EGFR and Notch in growth control and pattern formation in the Drosophila eye. In 2000, she obtained a Tenured Research position from the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) at the Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante (Spain). From 2002 to 2005, Dr. Dominguez was Deputy Director of the Instituto de Neurociencias, and she has recently been promoted to Full Professor. In 2000, Dr. Dominguez was selected EMBO Young Investigator (EMBO YIP) and since 2007 Dr. Dominguez is a member of EMBO. Her research group focus on the mechanisms of cancer and growth control by the Notch signalling pathway, using Drosophila as a model. She has been invited speaker at numerous national and international meetings and currently serves as a reviewer fro a number of peer reviewer publications including EMBO J, EMBO reports, Development, Genes and Development, Developmental Dynamics, Developmental Biology, Mechanisms of Development, Genes, Development and Evolution. She serves as a member of the editorial board of the journal ‘Developmental Dynamics’ since 2005. Recent works have revealed unsuspected connections between the Notch pathway and the epigenetic silencing pathways and the survivel pathways PI3K/AKT/PTEN in growth control and tumorigenesis. Marc K Drezner, MD, received his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1970. Subsequently he pursued training at Duke University Medical Center, followed by serving as a faculty member at the Institution. In 2000, Drezner became Professor of Medicine in the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) and was named Head of the Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. In 2006 he became Associate Dean for Clinical and Translational Research at UW-Madison SMPH. Drezner has been an active researcher for 35 years, making seminal contributions to knowledge regarding X-Linked Hypophosphatemia (XLH) and Pseudohypoparathyroidism (PSH). His research led to discovering PSH, Type 2 (N Engl J Med 289:1056-1059, 1973), collaborating in studies to clone and/or identify the genes underlying familial rickets, XLH (Nature Genetics 11:130-136, 1995) and Autosomal Recessive Hypophosphatemic Rickets (Nature Genetics 38:1310-1315, 2006), and conceiving of and naming a new family of hormones, the phosphatonins (N Engl J Med 330:1679-1681, 1994). Drezner has also been Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Metabolism and Secretary-Treasurer and President-Elect of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Metabolism. Further, he is a member of the American Federation for Clinical Research and the Endocrine Society and has been elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. Bruce Ettinger, MD, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, is Senior Investigator at the Northern California Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program Division of Research. He concurrently serves as Clinical Professor of Medicine and Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr Ettinger did his medical residency on the Harvard service of the Boston City Hospital. He served a fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Metabolic Research Unit of the University of California, San Francisco. Having spent 30 years practicing endocrinology and internal medicine, he has gained considerable practical knowledge of the management of endocrine disorders. His research, based on epidemiologic studies and clinical trials, has focused on prevention of postmenopausal osteoporosis and appropriate use of estrogen replacement therapy. He has published extensively on these and related topics. His contributions to our understanding of health issues in the menopause have led to his being Past-President of the North American Menopause Society. A Fellow of the United Kingdom Academy of Medical Sciences,
Dr Jonathan Flint had his original training in molecular genetics at the
MRC molecular haematology unit in Oxford, where he demonstrated that selection
by malaria explains why the inherited disorder of haemoglobin synthesis,
alpha thalassaemia, is the commonest Mendelian genetic disorder in the
world. After receiving postgraduate training in psychiatry at the Maudsley
Hospital in London, he then returned to Oxford to investigate the causes
of idiopathic mental retardation. His work showed that small rearrangements
involving the ends of chromosomes are detectable in approximately 8% of
people with mental retardation of unknown aetiology. Dr Fukumoto is a Lecturer of the Division of Nephrology and Endocrinology, Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Tokyo Hospital. His areas of interest include homeostatic control and derangements of mineral metabolism, and pathogenesis and treatment of metabolic bone diseases. Recently, he has contributed to the cloning of FGF23, the development of assay for FGF23 and the clarification of mechanisms of actions of FGF23. He was invited to give a talk in several international meetings including IBMS. He is now actively involved in the clinical, educational and research works in the University of Tokyo. He received his MD degree in 1982 and PhD degree in 1990 from the University of Tokyo. After receiving PhD degree, he spent a couple years in the laboratory headed by Professor T J Martin in Melbourne. He is now on the editorial board of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research, Bone and the Journal of Bone and Mineral Metabolism. Dr Claus-C Glüer is a Professor of Medical Physics at the Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein in Kiel, Germany. His research is focused on the development of innovative parametric imaging techniques and their quantitative evaluation. Working in the field of osteoporosis for more than 20 years he has contributed specifically to the development of bone densitometry, quantitative ultrasound and high resolution computed tomography approaches. He has coordinated several multicenter studies including OPUS, a European project on epidemiology and optimised diagnostic assessment of osteoporosis. He also has a strong research interest in developing multimodal methods for molecular imaging with applications in oncology, inflammation, and skeletal research. Dr Glüer has published more than 140 original papers. He is the current president of the German Academy of Bone and Joint Sciences, Associate Editor of Osteoporosis International, and a member of the Committee of Scientific Advisors of the International Osteoporosis Foundation. Professor Tim Hardingham is the founding Director of the UK Centre for Tissue Engineering (www.ukcte.org) and Professor of Biochemistry in the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research (www.wtccmr.man.ac.uk), Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, UK. Professor Hardingham is currently Chair of the Arthritis Research Campaign (UK) Research Grants Committee and immediate past Chairman of the British Society for Matrix Biology and has several awards and honours, including the Colworth Medal of The Biochemical Society (1978), the Roussel International Award for Basic Research in Osteoarthritis (1989) and the Carol Nachman International Prize for Research in Rheumatology (1991). He is a founding Trustee of the International Society for Hyaluronan Sciences and currently co-heads the Tissue Regeneration Section of the Faculty of 1000 Medicine. He was elected (2001) to the Governing Board of Tissue Engineering Society International (TESi) and was European Vice-President of TESi (2003-2005) and is now on TERMIS-EU Chapter board. Born in 1968 in Bavaria, German, I studied medicine at the University of Munich and obtained my MD degree 1995 in the thyroid field. My interest in bone research was stimulated during a post-doctoral fellowship at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN under the mentorship of Drs. Larry Riggs and Sundeep Khosla from 1996 to 1999. In 1999, I moved to Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany, where I established my own research group focussing on the RANKL/OPG biology in skeletal, malignant, and vascular diseases. In parallel, I completed my clinical education in internal medicine, endocrinology, and diabetes with board exams in 2003 and 2004. From 2004 to 2007 I was a Heisenberg senior fellow and consultant in Medicine. Starting in May 2007, I became head of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Bone Diseases, Department of Medicine III at the University Medical Center at Technical University of Dresden, Germany. Morten A Karsdal, (1973), received his Master of Science at the Technical University of Denmark (1998), and his PhD at the Southern University of Denmark (2004). Presently, Dr Karsdal is the Head of Pharmacology at Nordic Bioscience, a company engaged in the development of molecules and diagnostic tools for bone and cartilage diseases. Dr Karsdal has more than 50 peer reviewed publications and has received investigator awards at ECTS, ASBMR, IOF, OARSI, NYAS and the Calcified Tissue International meetings. Dr Karsdal’s main research interest is in the understanding of cell-cell communications in the pathogenesis of osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. Special emphasis is directed to the investigation of the coupling between bone formation and bone resorption, and the source of potential coupling factors from osteoclasts. In addition, the role of subchondral bone turnover in the pathogenesis osteoarthritis and the cell-cell communication involved is a major research and interest area. Dr Khan is Professor of Clinical Medicine, Divisions of Endocrinology and Geriatrics at McMaster University. She is the Director of the Calcium Disorders Clinic at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, McMaster University and the founding Chair of the Canadian Panel of the International Society of Clinical Densitometry, (ISCD) and Chair of the ISCD Certification Council. Dr. Khan is a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Osteoporosis Society of Canada. She graduated with honors from the University of Ottawa Medical School and obtained post-graduate training in Internal Medicine, Geriatric Medicine and Endocrinology at the University of Toronto. Dr Khan completed a clinical research fellowship in Calcium and Metabolic Bone Diseases at St. Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto. She has published over 70 scientific papers on osteoporosis and parathyroid bone disease. She led the development of the first Canadian standards papers on the practice of bone densitometry in men, pre and postmenopausal women and children. She also led the development of the first Canadian position paper on the management of primary hyperparathyroidism in conjunction with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr Khan’s clinical research has focused on parathyroid disease , calcium disorders and skeletal imaging. Dr Khan is the editorial consultant for the American College of Physicians - Hypercalcemia module. She is an editorial board member and reviewer for many journals. I was born and raised in Salzburg, Austria and studied Biology at the University of Salzburg. In 1991, I completed my PhD studies at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Endocrinology in Hannover and at the GSF in Munich, Germany and moved to Boston, USA. I worked as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. HM Kronenberg in the Endocrine Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital and at the Harvard Medical School in Boston. My research focused on the generation and characterization of PTH/PTHrP receptor knockout mice, which in part led to the important discovery of the negative feedback loop between Indian hedgehog and PTHrP that regulates the rate of chondrocyte differentiation in the growth plate. I was recruited in 1998 as an independent group leader at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany where I became interested in investigating the biology of FGF-23. I was appointed to Associate Professor of Developmental Biology at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in 2002. My lab is currently studying the role of Indian hedgehog during endochondral bone formation in vivo and the pathophysiological role of Fgf-23 using genetic mouse models. Dr Brendan Lee is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at the Baylor College of Medicine. He received his MD and PhD from State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in NY. His PhD focused on characterization of the first mutations in types II and III collagens in human dwarfisms. His postdoctoral studies at Mount Sinai Medical Center in NY culminated with the identification of the fibrillin gene in Marfan syndrome. He is Board Certified in Pediatrics, Clinical Genetics, and Biochemical Genetics. He is Director of the Skeletal Dysplasia Clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital, Director of the Medical Student Research Track at the Baylor College of Medicine, and Director of the joint Baylor College of Medicine and MD Anderson Cancer Center Bone Diseases Program of Texas. His research focuses on developmental genetics of the skeleton, inborn errors of metabolism, and gene therapy. Dr Little graduated MBBS from the University of Sydney in 1986. He received his FRACS(Orth) in 1995 and undertook further training at the Shriners Hospital for Children in Portland, OR, USA and Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children in Dallas TX, USA. Dr Little is active in clinical practice in Children’s Orthopaedics and heads Orthopaedic Research and Biotechnology at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. He is currently Head, Orthopaedic Research and Biotechnology at the Department of Orthopaedics and Associate Professor in Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Sydney at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead. In 2002 Dr Little was awarded the prestigious ABC travelling fellowship, presenting his research with other international fellows from UK, NZ and Sth Africa on a six-week tour of North America. In 2005 Dr Little was awarded his PhD on bisphosphonates in distraction osteogenesis. He has initiated further research on osteonecrosis and fracture healing. More recently Dr Little has been working on the manipulation of the anabolic and catabolic responses in bone repair, and has recently authored a review on this topic. Dr Little remains active clinically and is now working on translating pre-clinical work on bone healing to clinical practice. Dr Joseph Lorenzo is Professor of Medicine, and Director of Bone Biology Research at The University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut, U.S.A and Attending Physician at the John Dempsey Hospital of the University of Connecticut Health Center. He is currently on the editorial boards of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Bone. He previously was a Deputy Editor of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. His research interests have centered on the role that the immune system has in regulating bone cell function. This has led him to studies of the effects that cytokines have on osteoclast development and the role that estrogens have in regulating immune cells and preventing the development of osteoporosis. Most recently, he has been studying the phenotype of the osteoclast precursor cell, the relationship of this cell to other immune cells and the factors that regulate its development. Clemens Lowik is a Professor in Molecular Endocrinology and Molecular Imaging at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands. His current research consists of : The molecular mechanisms involved in sclerostin action, mesenchymal stem cell differentiation (into bone, cartilage, fat and neuronal cells) and bone metastasis of breast and prostate cancer. The molecular imaging technologies he is using in living mice are based on non-invasive whole body 2D and 3D optical imaging (bioluminescence and fluorescence) to follow gene expression, cell differentiation and cell fate and all kinds of other cellular and molecular processes. Optical imaging is now also combined with other imaging modalities like fast CT and ultra high field MRI. Prof. Lowik is one of the pioneers on this technology and he is one of the sub-coordinators of the European Network of Excellence with the acronym EMIL: European Molecular Imaging Laboratories. Dr Lowik is also one of the founders of the European Society of Molecular Imaging and current secretary. Frank P Luyten is Professor and Chairman of the Division of Rheumatology, Department of Musculoskeletal Sciences, at the University Hospitals Leuven, Director of the Laboratory for Skeletal Development and Joint Disorders (K U Leuven, Belgium), and Chairman of the Department of Musculoskeletal Sciences at the KUL. Among his scientific achievements, two important contributions are the discovery of Cartilage derived Morphogenetic Proteins, members of the BMP family and their role in human skeletogenesis, and the discovery of Frzb, an antagonist of Wnt signaling. Both pathways have been identified as critical in the formation of skeletal tissues and joint morphogenesis. More recently, his group and others have provided strong evidence for the involvement of these same pathways in human arthritic diseases. Professor Dr Luyten is also founder, scientific and medical advisor, and member of the board of directors of TiGeniX, a biotech spin-off of the Universities of Leuven and Ghent (www.tigenix.com). Koichi Matsuo earned his MD (1987) and PhD (1992) from Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan. After postdoctoral training with Professor Walter Schaffner at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Zurich University, Switzerland (1992 -1995), he moved to the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria, to begin additional postdoctoral studies (1995-1998) with Professor Erwin F Wagner. In 1998, he was appointed Staff Scientist at the IMP. In 2000, he moved to National Institute for Longevity Sciences in Aichi, Japan. In 2001, he was appointed Associate Professor of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Keio University School of Medicine. Mary C Nakamura received her MD at Yale with training in rheumatology at Johns Hopkins and the University of California, San Francisco. She is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine at UCSF. Dr Nakamura’s research focuses on the regulation of innate immune cells that are important sensors of their microenvironment, providing early responses to infectious, neoplastic and environmental stresses. Work in her laboratory has recently focused on innate immune receptors in osteoclasts, the critical bone resorbing cells. Certain innate immune receptor signaling pathways have recently been shown to be required for normal osteoclast differentiation. Osteoclasts are therefore similar to other innate immune cells, and are regulated by a balance of signals through multiple activating and inhibitory receptors. Dr Nakamura’s lab is currently working to further define the roles of specific receptors and signals in osteoclast development during basal and pathological bony remodeling states. Dr Nakamura is a prior recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award and the American College of Rheumatology Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award. Manuel Naves (born 1961) received his PhD in Biology
at the Oviedo University of Spain (1995). He has worked as a Fellow at
the ARC Epidemiology Research Unit in Manchester, UK, analysing risk factors
associated with the appearance of vertebral fractures in the European
Vertebral Osteoporosis Study (EVOS) (1995-1996). He is currently an Associate
Biologist in the Bone and Mineral Research Unit - Reina Sofia Research
Institute at the Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias, Oviedo, Spain.
He is now involved in some research projects in the cardiovascular field
and he has more than 70 peer reviewed publications. Dorthe Nielsen, graduated as a nurse in 1991 in Odense University Hospital, Denmark. She has in her nursing duties always focused on patient education and patient perspectives in handling chronic illnesses in everyday life. October 2005, she completed her Masters degree in Health Science. January 2007 Dorthe Nielsen was enrolled as a PhD student at the University of Southern Denmark. Her research interest involves patient education for patients with osteoporosis, patients’ perspectives in everyday life, adherence to treatment, and collaborative research using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Dorthe Nielsen has organised several working groups on the subject of patient education and adherence to treatment, in national and international settings, including at ECTS, Copenhagen, 2007, and at ASBMR, Hawaii, 2007. In Denmark she has started a network for allied health professionals aiming to increase knowledge and development about osteoporosis from a multidisciplinary point of view. Richard Oreffo holds the chair of Musculoskeletal Science and is co-founder of the Centre for Human Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration (www.stemcells.org.uk) at the University of Southampton. Richard graduated from Liverpool and Oxford with degrees in Biochemistry and a DPhil in Bone Biology. After three years in San Antonio Texas, with Professor Greg Mundy working on Bone Remodeling, Richard returned to England to take up a post at Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, followed by a return to the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre in Oxford. In 1999, Richard was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Southampton followed by a readership and personal chair in 2004.Richard leads a group focused on developing strategies to regenerate bone and cartilage and on understanding bone development (www.mesenchymalstemcells.org). He is on the editorial boards of the journals ‘European Cells and Materials’ and ‘Regenerative Medicine’ and has published over 90 refereed papers and 20 contributed reviews/book chapters. Roberto Pacifici, MD, is the Garland Herndon Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipids at Emory University, Atlanta GA. Dr. Pacifici received his MD in 1984 from the University of Perugia, Italy. He completed his residency in Medicine at the same institution. He was fellows in Endocrinology and Metabolism in the Division of Bone and Mineral Metabolism at the Washington University School of Medicine from 1984 to 1988. He has been member of the faculty of Washington University from 1988 to 2002 where he rose to the position of Shemberg Professor of Medicine. Dr Pacifici is an expert on the mechanism of action of sex-steroids in bone and one of the founder of the field of osteoimmunology. He is also an expert on bone densitometry and the clinical management of osteoporosis. He has published over 80 papers and 25 chapters, mostly in highly regarded journals. He serves as the Principal Investigators in 3 NIH grants. Throughout his career, Dr. Pacifici has been the recipient of such accolades as the National Osteoporosis Foundation Research Award in 1988, the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research Fuller Albright Young Investigator Award in 1995 and the “Most Outstanding Research on the Pathophysiology of Osteoporosis Award” from American Society of Bone and Mineral Research in 2003 and 2004. He is a member of the prestigious Association of American Physicians. He is affiliated with several professional societies and he is a member of the editorial board of Bone and the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. Socrates E Papapoulos received his MD from the University of Athens, Greece, and he was trained in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology in Athens and at the Middlesex Hospital, London, UK. In 1984 he joined the Department of Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases of the Leiden University Medical Center where he is currently Professor of Medicine, Consultant Physician and Director of Bone and Mineral Research. Since 1974 he has been continuously engaged in basic and clinical research in disorders of calcium and bone metabolism. Ian Reid MD is Professor of Medicine and Endocrinology at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, where he is Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. His research interests include the causes and treatment of osteoporosis & Paget’s disease, and his research group has been active in the identification of novel regulators of bone cell function. He is immediate past-president of the International Bone and Mineral Society, Secretary of the Asian Pacific Osteoporosis Foundation, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Since 1 October 1997, P August Schubiger has been full Professor of Radio pharmacy at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. He heads the Center for Radiopharmaceutical Science of the ETH, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and at the Clinic and Polyclinic for Nuclear Medicine at the University of Zurich. Professor Schubiger studied chemistry at the University of Zurich and got his Ph.D. in 1972. I followed one year postdoctoral work in radiochemistry at the Federal Institute for Reactor Physics, one year as an IAEA expert in Brazil and two and a half years at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg he took 1979 a position in the radio pharmacy division of the PSI of which he has been the head since 1989. The main activities of the radio pharmacy research are the development of radioactively labeled molecules, which bind specifically to defined structures. Such functional radiopharmaceuticals can serve both as diagnostic agents in nuclear medicine and as therapeutic agents for use against tumor metastases. Dr Elizabeth Shane did her training in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Columbia University, where she is Professor of Medicine and Attending Physician at Columbia University Medical Center. Dr. Shane was Associate Editor of the First through the Sixth Editions of the Primer of the Metabolic Bone Diseases and Disorders of Mineral Metabolism and a past Associate Editor of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. She reviews for many medical, endocrinology and bone journals. She is a Past-President of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. Her research interests are osteoporosis in premenopausal women, bone disease in HIV-infected women, secondary forms of osteoporosis such as transplantation osteoporosis, renal bone disease and bone loss due to medications and disorders of the gastrointestinal tract. Tim Spector is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology at Kings College, London, and Director of the Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology Unit at St Thomas’ Hospital, London. Professor Spector graduated from St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, London, in 1982. After working in General Medicine, he completed a MSc in Epidemiology, and his MD degree at the University of London in 1989. He founded the UK Twins Registry of 10,000 twins in 1993, which is one of the largest collections of genotype and phenotype information on twins worldwide, whose breadth of research has expanded to cover a wide range of common complex traits many of which were previously thought to be mainly due to ageing and environment. He has published over 350 research articles on common diseases. He has written several original articles on the heritability of a wide range of diseases and traits including back pain, acne, inflammation, obesity, memory, musical ability and sexuality. He is principal investigator of the EU Euroclot and Treat OA study, and a partner in five others. He has written several books, focusing on osteoporosis and genetics and in 2003 he published a popular book on genetics ‘Your Genes Unzipped’. André Uitterlinden is a Professor of Complex
Genetics at Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam. He graduated from Leiden
University in 1985 where he also obtained his PhD in 1993 after working
at TNO, a Dutch Research Organisation, as well as both US and Dutch Biotech
firms. In 1994 he joined the Erasmus Medical Center in the Department
of Internal Medicine and he now also has positions in the Department of
Epidemiology & Biostatistics and the Department of Clinical Chemistry. BS UC, Davis, 1973; PhD (Chemistry), UC, Berkeley, 1979. Assistant Professor (1985-1990), Associate Professor (1990-1992), Professor (1992-present), Department of Chemistry, UC, Berkeley; Assistant Dean, College of Chemistry (1992-1997); HC Brown Lecturer, Purdue University, 1995; Miller Research Professor, UC, Berkeley, 1998; Center for Advanced Biomolecular Research Distinguished Lecturer, Texas A&M University, 2004, Fellow of the American Association of Science, 2005. Dr Wemmer has developed and applied NMR methods to
probe the structures and dynamics of biomolecules. He has designed new
sequence specific DNA ligands capable of effecting gene regulation and
provided understanding of the protein conformational changes that regulate
bacterial signal transduction in response to formation of labile phosphoaspartate
linkages in receiver domains. In the past few years he has used the high
sensitivity of hyperpolarized xenon to probe biological systems. Initial
studies examined protein interactions, but subsequently the focus has
been cryptophane cage containing conjugates that enable high sensitivity
targeted MRI. |
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