Upcoming Medical Conferences in Banff

Canadian Academy of Geriatric Psychiatry (CAGP)-Canadian Coalition for Seniors Mental Health (CCSMH) Annual Scientific Meeting 2019 is organized by Canadian Academy of Geriatric Psychiatry (CAGP) / Academie Canadienne De Gerontopsychiatrie (ACGP) and will be held from Oct 25 - 26, 2019 at The Rimrock Resort Hotel, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Course Objectives : Upon completion of the conference, participants should be able to: • Identify the importance of resilience in seniors’ mental health and the neurobiological, psychosocial and behavioural factors contributing to resilience. • Describe approaches to nurture and build resilience in older adults. • Explore the changing landscape of seniors' mental health in Canada. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

2019 Canadian Transplant Summit is organized by Canadian Society of Transplantation (CST) / Societe canadienne de transplantation (SCT) and will be held from Oct 16 - 19, 2019 at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Event themes • Improving precision in decision-making around accepting/declining high-risk or marginal organ offers for individuals. • Low grade inflammation is damaging to long-term transplant outcomes. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

36th Annual Emergency Medicine for Rural Hospitals is organized by University of Calgary - Continuing Medical Education and Professional Development and will be held from Jan 17 - 19, 2020 at Banff Park Lodge Resort Hotel & Conference Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Course Description: This course provides the latest learning on clinical topics relevant to physicians, nurses and pre-hospital professionals in rural practice. Through a combination of plenary lectures, small group interactive sessions and hands-on workshops, led by experts with a rural perspective, participants will review current issues, guidelines and trends in the diagnosis, treatment and management of patients who present to rural emergency departments. Additional details will be posted as soon as information is available.

22nd Annual Rural Anesthesia for GP Anesthesiologists is organized by University of Calgary - Continuing Medical Education and Professional Development and will be held on Jan 17, 2020 at Banff Park Lodge Resort Hotel & Conference Centre, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Who Should Attend? GP Anesthesiologists working in rural settings. Course Description: This intensive one-day course for GP anesthesiologists features a blend of expert-lead didactic teaching and practical skill-development workshops and offers opportunities for networking and exchange of information and ideas between leaders in the field and rural GP anesthesiologists. Additional details will be posted as soon as information is available.

Cancer Evolution and Combinatorial Cancer Therapies: Concepts and Challenges (L1) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Jan 19 - 23, 2020 at Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Description Progress in understanding the clonal and sub-clonal processes driving tumor evolution, in understanding tumor heterogeneity, in defining new cancer dependencies and in understanding mechanisms of therapeutic resistance have converged to help inform more rational approaches to achieving the development of transformative combination therapeutic regimens in cancer. Nonetheless, examples of highly effective rationally elucidated combinations remains rare and the pre-clinical and clinical development challenges to this goal are substantial. As an example, the emergent role of immunotherapeutics having curative potential has led to tremendous excitement, yet increased complexity. The broad swath of empiric based clinical trials attests to the continued or growing need for improved pre-clinical means by which we identify the transformative combinations. This meeting will bring together evolutionary and computational biologists, experts in functional genomics, translational scientists, drug discovery leaders and physicians leaders in clinical development. The meeting will span the beginnings of the cancer problem starting with how evolutionary processes drive the “natural” progression of cancer and how such processes lead to the measured heterogeneous populations of cells resident in all tumors. These two related forces, driven at least in part by ongoing mutational processes, then combine to give rise to therapeutic resistance and increasingly we can robustly identify mechanisms relevant to humans in pre-clinical models. The deeper understanding of these forces can inform specific combination therapeutics, but increasingly combination hypotheses are being discovered though genome-scale functional approaches (e.g. CRISPR, shRNA). These studies now taking place in both the targeted and I/O therapeutic fields motivate a session and additional talks aimed at understanding how I/O and targeted therapeutics are similar or distinct and to seek the lessons from the clinical trial outputs in the I/O field that will emerge over the next year. Finally, clinical development paradigms for more rapidly testing and developing combinations will be considered Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Emerging Cellular Therapies: Cancer and Beyond (Q1) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Feb 08 - 12, 2020 at Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Description: After many years of fundamental research, cell-based therapies are now recognized as effective medicines for treatment of a specific subset of cancers as well as a growing list of autoimmune, degenerative and infectious diseases. This clinical progress has been propelled by exponential growth in understanding of the underlying cell biology, and increasingly sophisticated techniques for genetic engineering and for using synthetic biology to control cellular therapeutics. Cellular therapeutics are now poised for increasing impact both in cancer medicine and in the treatment of genetic, autoimmune and degenerative diseases. This conference will bring together fundamental researchers and translational scientists to discuss recent successes and highlight challenges across the spectrum of emerging cellular therapeutics. Another innovative aspect of this conference is the joint pairing with the Keystone Symposia conference on “Engineering the Genome” organized by Drs. Vic Myer and Erik Sontheimer. This unique pairing will provide an outstanding opportunity to cross-fertilize ideas and to facilitate formation of new collaborations between experts in genome engineering and experts in cell biology, cell-based therapies and synthetic biology. The conference will provide an opportunity to report emerging preclinical and clinical insights, present novel platforms, and highlight challenges related to both safety and efficacy of cell therapies. The broad disease focus will enhance collaborations between the cancer immunotherapy communities and those focused on developing cell therapies for non-malignant disease. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Engineering the Genome (Q2) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Feb 08 - 12, 2020 at Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Description Genome editing is already transforming biological science and promises to do the same for human medicine. Technological capabilities are advancing rapidly and there are expected to be more than 30 genome editing therapies in clinical development by 2020. It is therefore important that practitioners in both academia and industry have the opportunity to learn about the latest improvements and applications. This conference will bridge that gap and provide an ideal environment for scientific exchange.  In addition, participants will be educated on the growing roster and utility of genome engineering platforms. There will be sessions on genome editing’s clinical advancements and the evolution of thinking in the field regarding translational sciences. This meeting is being paired with Emerging Cellular Therapies so that participants can come together with researchers who focus on cell-based therapies. Therefore, we anticipate attendees will have a greater awareness of the full range of genome engineering tools, both established and emerging and knowledge of best practices and pitfalls in clinical advancement. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

14th Canadian Melanoma Conference 2020 is organized by Oncology Education and will be held from Feb 20 - 22, 2020 at Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Target Audience: This conference brings together medical oncologists, surgeons, dermatologists, radiotherapists, pathologists, molecular biologists, immunologists, and other allied health professionals interested in the treatment of melanoma worldwide. Additional details will be posted as soon as information is available.

Obesity and NAFLD: Mechanisms and Therapeutics (B3) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Feb 23 - 27, 2020 at Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Description Energy metabolism underlies all facets of human health. Now, with rates of obesity and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) surging, understanding how energy metabolism is governed is of the utmost interest. Halting the progression of NAFLD into nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) is considered an unmet need in human health. At this meeting, we will discuss regulatory elements underlying obesity and NAFLD, and the metabolic underpinnings of NASH. We will focus on metabolites, hormones, and cellular signaling pathways. We will also examine the leading edge of therapeutic approaches for obesity and NASH. We will bring together scientists and physicians specializing in basic, translational, and clinical research, as well as industry scientists, to create a robust exchange of ideas on how to move the field forward.  Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

T Cell Memory (X2) Conference is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Mar 01 - 05, 2020 at Fairmont Banff Springs, Banff, Alberta, Canada. Description This meeting will bring together immunologists with expertise in basic lymphocyte biology, vaccinology, and cancer immunotherapy to discuss the most recent advances in immunological memory. The meeting will be paired with B Cell Renaissance: Regulation, epigenetics, and Immunotherapy. A joint session will focus on B cell memory, and remaining sessions will be tilted towards T cell memory and helper T cell responses. The meeting will communicate the paradigm shifting discoveries on the molecular programming and epigenetic maintenance of lymphocyte differentiation states, introduce cutting edge tools to a broad audience, and promote cross-fertilization between diverse scientists to accelerate application of new concepts in immune memory for vaccines that prevent infectious disease or enhance the durability and function of adoptive cell therapies for treating cancer.  This meeting is timely because the recent identification of resident memory lymphocytes is changing how we strategize employing memory for prevention of infectious disease and the latest findings should be shared with the vaccine community. Interest in adoptive cell therapies has exploded, but success will depend on manipulating the durability and differentiation state of transferred cancer-fighting lymphocytes. The field of immunological memory is poised to address these challenges and contribute to clinical leveraging of this exciting therapeutic. Moreover, perhaps for the first time, this meeting will directly attempt to highlight problems and provide a solution to the nomenclature problems that have impeded discourse and advances related to memory T cell ontogeny.  Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.