doi: 10.1161/01.HYP.0000259293.71884.3a
(Hypertension. 2007;49:585.)
© 2007 American Heart Association, Inc.
Preface |
The 60th Annual Fall Conference and Scientific Sessions of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research in association with the Council on the Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease
From the Department of Physiology, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, La.
The 60th Annual Fall Conference and Scientific Sessions of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research in association with the Council on the Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease, held October 4–7, 2006, in San Antonio, Tex, was a great success. More than 500 abstracts were submitted, and the program committee selected almost 400 for presentation as oral and poster communications. The workshop held the day before the meeting was on Sex Hormones, Gender, and Hypertension, with talks ranging from molecular mechanisms to clinical implications. In addition to the free communications, talks by the recipients of the Novartis, Corcoran, and Irving Page Bradley Lifetime Achievement Awards as well as special state-of-the-art lecturers all contributed to an exciting meeting covering many timely and novel aspects of hypertension research. A new exciting feature of the meeting was the revised Goldblatt Young Investigator award. Three outstanding young investigators were selected to present their work during a specific session. The awards committee then selected the winner and announced the winner at the awards luncheon.
The awards presented at the meeting recognize outstanding achievement in hypertension research. Our premier award given to investigators who have made outstanding discoveries in hypertension research is the Novartis Award for Hypertension Research. The 2 recipients of the 2006 Novartis Award are William B. Campbell, PhD, FAHA, and Theodore W. Kurtz, MD FAHA (Figure 1). Dr Campbell received the award for pioneering discoveries on the role of endothelium-derived factors in the regulation of vasomotor function and aldosterone secretion. He identified endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factor as cytochrome P-450–dependent lipid metabolites, epoxyeicosatetranoic acids (EETs); discovered a new class of endothelium-derived vasodilator eicosanoids, EET derivatives, and their biosynthetic pathways; and described the regulation of aldosterone biosynthesis by novel endothelial factors. Dr Kurtz received the award for identification of molecular gene variants contributing to cardiovascular and metabolic phenotypes in experimental models of spontaneous, complex, polygenic hypertension. He employed recombinant, inbred, congenic and transgenic strains of spontaneously hypertensive rat models to identify a major mutation in the spontaneously hypertensive rat gene for fatty acid transporter Cd36 linked to increased circulating fatty acids and insulin resistance and specific DNA sequence variants in the coding region of the 11ß-hydroxylase gene linked to steroid biosynthesis and blood pressure response to salt in the Dahl salt-sensitive rat. Both Dr Campbell and Dr Kurtz presented lectures at the meeting.
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The Irvine Page-Alva Bradley Lifetime Achievement award, sponsored by an endowment from Monarch Pharmaceuticals, was presented to Christopher S. Wilcox, MD, PhD, FAHA, for outstanding contributions to our understanding of the roles of vasoactive mediators in hypertension and renal disease (Figure 2). Dr Wilcox also presented a state-of-the-art lecture titled "Salt Sensitive Hypertension: Insight from Animal Models and Translational Studies in Human Subjects."
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Thomas M. Coffman, MD, FAHA, was selected to present the Arthur C. Corcoran lecture and provided an update on the outstanding work from his laboratory (Figure 3). The title of his lecture was "AT1 Receptors and Hypertension: It’s All About the Kidneys."
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As mentioned earlier, 3 finalists were selected for the Harry Goldblatt New Investigator award. The 3 finalists were Mingyu Liang, MD, PhD, from the Medical College of Wisconsin; Tianxin Yang, MD, PhD, from the University of Utah (Figure 4); and Akira Nishiyama, MD, PhD, from Kagawa University Medical School. All 3 finalists made outstanding presentations. TYang was selected as the winner for his presentation on "Collecting Duct-Specific Knockout of PPARã Impairs Sodium Retaining Ability and Reduces Blood Pressure during Sodium Depletion."
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This issue of Hypertension contains selected papers covering presentations made at the 60th Annual Fall Conference. Overall, there were 78 manuscripts submitted, which were subjected to rigorous peer review. Of these, 17 were accepted for publication in this issue and are representative of the high caliber of science that was presented at the meeting. We would like to thank all of the members of the program committee and the abstract reviewers for their outstanding work in developing the program. We also thank all of the referees who reviewed the papers submitted for this special issue of Hypertension. Many outstanding papers were submitted, and we regret that only a small representative number could be selected for publication.
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Correspondence to L. Gabriel Navar, Department of Physiology, Tulane University School of Medicine, 1430 Tulane Ave, SL39, New Orleans, LA 70112. E-mail navar@tulane.edu.
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