2011 NPF Fellows Symposium

This year the National Pancreas Foundation’s Fellows Symposium travelled down south to Atlanta, GA.  April 8 through 10, 2011, a group of fellows and mentors met at Emory Conference Center Hotel for this event now in its sixth year.

This year 33 Fellows and 20 Mentors participated.  With a packed scheduled the fellows made use of every opportunity to network, with both their colleagues and with mentors from across the country.  Many fellows left the symposium with new research ideas, possible collaborations and a network of mentors.

Here are comments from some of the Fellows:

“Being able to interact and make connections with others interested in the same area certainly impacts on my future development.”

“These lectures will definitely focus my planning of both clinical studies and basic science.”

” I expected a good conference but got much more.”

“I used this opportunity to really kick start my career.”

“This has been an eye opening experience with regards to advancement in the field and opportunitiesforresearch.”

Topics included in this year’s symposium were:

• Benefiting from Experience: The perspective of previous fellows
• Pancreatic Exocrine Testing, Treatment and Function Testing
• Genes and Pancreatitis
• Pain in Chronic Pancreatitis and Pancreatic Cancer
• Pathology of Pancreatic Lesions
• Pancreatic Cystic Lesions
• Update of Pancreatic Polypeptide Therapy
• Imaging of the Pancreas
• Endoscopic approaches to Pancreatic Diseases
• Pancreatic Transplant and Diabetes
• Pancreatic Cancer: Adeno carcinoma and premalignant lesions
• Novel Therapies for Pancreatic Cancer
• Surgical Approaches to Pancreatic Cancer
• Multicenter Studies: Tips regarding study design, data collection and analyses

This event was a great success due to the hard work of many and we extend our sincere appreciation to:

• Steering Committee for the Fellows Symposium
  • Andres Gelrud, MD
  • Michele Lewis, MD
  • John Lieb, MD.

• Faculty
  • Dana Andersen, MD
  • Michelle Anderson, MD, MSc
  • Chris de Maio, MD
  • Elliot Fishman, MD
  • Marty Freeman, MD
  • Andres Gelrud, MD
  • Paul Grippo, PhD
  • Richard Kwon, MD
  • Michele Lewis, MD
  • John Lieb, MD
  • Mark Lowe, MD
  • James Moser, MD
  • Andy Rhim, MD
  • Michael Rickels, MD
  • Phillip Toskes, MD
  • Santhi Vege, MD
  • David Whitcomb, MD, PhD
  • Bechien Wu, MD
  • Lizhi Zhang, MD
  • Dhiraj Yadav, MD, MPH

We would like to thank the following sponsors who provide educational grant support for this program:

• Abbott
• Eurand
• Boston Scientific
• ChiRhoClin