"The big breakthrough over about the past six years has been reprogramming—taking adult somatic cells and turning them back into pluripotent cells. Building on top of that is the notion that you can change an adult cell into another cell," Daley tells ddn by way of explaining the shift. "A big challenge of drug development has been testing drugs in human models of disease. Drugs tend to be tested in animal models and don't get exposed to human tests until clinical trials, when many of them then fail. But we're seeing increasing use of reprogrammed iPS cells to model human disease. So there is a whole interface of drug screening and human disease modeling that people are going to hear a lot about at the annual meeting."  

 

"Plus, there is just a lot of new technology for manipulating cells now," he says. "People are using light to change the orientation of cells, there is new nuclease technology for changing genes in target cells and so much more—we also have a whole session on gene transfer and gene therapy, which is an area that is really coming of age."  

 

Another sign of stem cell research's coming of age is seen in the poster presentations for the annual meeting. In February, the ISSCR had already highlighted the fact on its website that more than 2,000 abstracts had been received for the poster sessions, marking a new record for submissions for the meeting.

 

 

The poster sessions add great depth and breadth of scientific exchange to the meeting, Daley says, and in recognition of their importance and growth, this year the ISSCR has added "Poster Briefs" to the program, which is, Daley says, "an expansion of our very popular one-minute poster teasers."  

 

Each concurrent session will include three very brief presentations that highlight exceptional abstracts, sparking conversation to be continued in the evening poster sessions.  

 

"This has really become a very broad meeting, and we had over 2,000 poster submissions and something like 30 or more invited speakers," Daley says. "We ended up choosing almost a hundred speakers from the abstract submissions so that they could take the stage. We want to keep featuring more junior researchers and have more diversity, too, in terms of both the scientific coverage and international representation. We're increasing the use of poster teasers, and presenters will have a couple minutes on the stage. It's a great way for people to raise interest in the posters by having a chance to briefly present them to the broader audience of attendees."  

 

Related to that program addition, which benefits many younger researchers, is a general increase of focus on scientists who are in the early stages of their career.  

 

"Another new thing for the annual meeting, which is a response to requests from members and meeting attendees, is more mentoring of junior scientists," Daley says of this shift in focus. "We have a whole session to bring in junior scientists so they can have a provocative Q&A session with senior scientists."  

 

The ISSCR's annual meeting is reportedly the largest international interdisciplinary forum dedicated to stem cell science. The meeting brings typically together more than 3,500 of the world's stem cell researchers each year—though Daley thinks it could end up exceeding that mark this year—to discuss emerging science in what has become a fast-paced field.  

 

"This started out a small event—almost a workshop, really—of a couple hundred people meeting in Washington, D.C., and now it's a huge convention with probably over 4,000 people who will be attending and a huge diversity of areas covered," Daley says. Looking toward subsequent annual meetings, he adds, "What I see happening in the future for what is covered is the technology base becoming more relevant to pharma. I'm already seeing a trend of pharmas starting internal research programs as they realize that the interface of stem cell technology and drug development is powerful. We'll be seeing more and more drug development and cell therapy programs highlighted at the meeting, because I think that's where the field is going—more toward therapeutic applications."  

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