One of the most exciting responsibilities of the President is to work with the members of the Annual Meeting Steering Committee (AMSC) to craft the scientific and educational components of the ENDO program. I am pleased to report that this committee is an impressive assemblage of bright and accomplished endocrinologists from around the world. Committee members travelled from near and far — from Asia, Oceania, Europe, the Middle East, and across the Americas — for our recent planning meeting. I am especially grateful to the chairs of the committee Carol Wysham, MD, Overall Chair, Jenny Visser, PhD, Basic Science Co-chair, Gary Hammer, MD, PhD, Clinical Science Co-chair, and Mike McDermott, MD, Physician in Practice Co-chair, for their leadership and thoughtful contributions.
ENDO is our largest, most visible activity and reflects the breadth, depth, and diversity of endocrine research and practice. Adding to our responsibilities this year, ENDO 2016 (April 1 – 4, 2016, in Boston) will mark the 100th anniversary of the fi rst organizational meeting of our Society and thus will kick off the Endocrine Society’s Centennial Celebration. Covering all the bases in current endocrine research and practice is just the beginning of what the Society is aiming to accomplish in Boston. As we take time to celebrate 100 years of discovery and advances in patient care, we will also chart our collective course for the next 100 years of progress.
Embracing our centennial theme, the AMSC has organized the plenary lectures to commemorate the accomplishments of Nobel and Lasker Prize-winning endocrine researchers. The Presidential Plenary Session will celebrate the accomplishments of Banting, MacLeod, their collaborators Best and Collip, and Sanger, for the initial discovery of insulin and the subsequent elucidation of its structure. In this special opening session, Douglas Melton will present his laboratory’s latest advances in developing beta cells from induced pluripotent stem cells, and Edward Damiano will provide us with the very latest data from his group’s development of an artifi cial pancreas. Our aim is to illuminate how basic science discoveries and their translation into practice have dramatically improved patient health. Following this model, other plenary sessions will celebrate the development of in vitro fertilization technology, the surgical treatment of thyroid cancer, and the discovery of hormones and second messenger signaling pathways, including steroid hormones and hypothalamic-releasing
hormones.
Among the cutting-edge scientific and clinical symposia planned by the AMSC is an array of Centennial Symposia. In each of these special sessions, the chairman will provide a brief historical perspective that will celebrate how far we have come in our century of discovery and practice. Speakers will be challenged not only to show their latest data but also to define priorities for future research and to predict the direction in which our field will go in the next century.
Our meeting will feature a diverse assortment of special sessions, including the perennial favorite, the Clarke T. Sawin History of Endocrinology lecture on 100 Years of Endocrinology, as well as a special Century in Thyroid review. In addition, the AMSC has planned a number of Year in Sessions, Master Clinician Sessions, and an Endocrine Debate. The ENDO 2016 website will have all of the details.
As always, the committee has invited an impressive roster of physician educators to lead Meet-the-Professor (MTP) sessions. Mike, Carol, and I are particularly keen that these MTP sessions be true to their original intent — effective and engaging education. We are requiring the entire MTP faculty to deliver case-based and interactive sessions. The program will also feature Case Management Forum sessions in which clinician experts team up to test each other and you with particularly challenging cases.
ENDO 2016, with its special Centennial theme, will provide an opportunity for our community to take stock of our accomplishments and to set our top priorities for the future. We hope that you will be part of the best Endocrine Society Annual Meeting and EXPO ever, so please mark your calendars with the dates: April 1 – 4, 2016. The abstract submission deadline is November 10, and registration opens on October 5, 2015, with the early registration deadline for the lowest price ending on January 13. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me at [email protected].
Lisa H. Fish, MD
President, Endocrine Society
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