The Society of Toxicology 53rd Annual Meeting and ToxExpo will feature nearly 3,000 presentations including featured lectures and over 2800 abstracts. Some of the highlights are as follows:
- Plenary Opening Lecture: Nobel Laureate Sir John B. Gurdon will present “The Origins and Future of Pluripotency and Cellular Programming,” Monday, March 24, 8:00 am–9:00 am. At the University of Cambridge, he co-founded a research institute of developmental and cancer biology (now named the Gurdon Institute). Dr. Gurdon received the 2009 Lasker Award for Basic Medical Science and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2012. Dr. Gurdon also will be holding a discussion with postdoctoral and graduate student SOT members following his lecture. This will be a ticketed event, limited to 40 participants.
- Keynote Medical Research Council (MRC) Lecture: John D. Scott will present “Guiding Signals through Achored Enzyme Complexes: Implications for Disease, Wednesday, March 26, 8:00 am–9:00 am. He is the Edwin G. Krebs–Hilma Speights Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle. Dr. Scott is a fellow of the Royal Society, London, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Dr. Scott also will be holding a discussion with postdoctoral and graduate student SOT members following his lecture. This will be a ticketed event, limited to 40 participants.
- Frontiers for Toxicology: The Scientific Program Committee is pleased to sponsor this special symposium series that was inaugurated in 2013. The 2014 session focuses on “Noncoding RNAs in Human Health, Therapeutic, and Environmental Disease.” The broad concepts to be addressed include general concepts surrounding the biology of noncoding RNAs, their role in development and in specific disease processes, and their potential role in novel therapeutic approaches.
- SOT/Eurotox Debate: Each year the SOT Annual Meeting includes a debate that continues a tradition that originated in the early 1990s in which leading toxicologists advocate the opposing sides of an issue of great toxicological importance. This year the debaters will address “Are Nonmontonic Dose–Responses at Low Dose Levels Toxicologically Relevant? SOT Debater James C. Lamb IV and EUROTOX Debater Dieter Schrenk exchange perspectives on Monday, March 24, 4:45 pm–6:00 pm.
- Special Symposium Session, “A Conversation with the Director of NIEHS: Dr. Linda Birnbaum:” This important session on Monday, March 24, 1:30 pm–2:30 pm will provide a venue for meeting attendees to have a candid and open discussion with Dr. Birnbaum concerning the direction, funding opportunities, and scientific priorities for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She is also the head of the National Toxicology Program.