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International PC Consortium (IPCC) SYMPOSIUM The meeting began with a dinner on board the Mark Twain Riverboat. After dinner, an update on the research registry was given. A Young Investigator Award was made to Qian Wang (Chris Contag’s lab) for outstanding work for PC during 2004-2005. In addition, Frances Smith was presented with the PC Project Career Development Award. This $150,000/yr award is given to support Frances Smith in focusing on PC-specific research efforts over the next three years and is intended to launch a continuing career in translational research. The Medical and Scientific Advisory Board (MSAB) members were also recognized and new IPCC members were welcomed. Each attendee was presented with a CD containing nearly 500 articles related to PC, including nearly 100 translations of foreign articles. This material is also available in a searchable format at www.pachyonychia.org. If you were not able to attend the meeting please request your CD bibliography from PC Project. On the following day, our scientific conference was well attended, both by our IPCC members and other members of the dermatologic community. The conference consisted of updates and declarations of progress by our 2004-2005 grant recipients. Overall, the updates were very informative and significant progress had been made by every investigator. Sancy Leachman noted over 210 patients have been identified, and 71 enrolled in the registry, providing clinical scientists with a potential pool of PC candidates for future clinical trials. Maurice van Steensel discussed a promising new retinoid, RAMBA, that is currently under investigation in his program and which may be tried in the future for PC. Frances Smith with Haihui Liao reported on the genotyping work completed. Irwin McLean with Yiwei Zhao reported development of several essential molecular tools that will be extremely useful to the consortium members and also reported progress toward investigation of small molecules that may have an effect on keratin expression. Leonard Milstone presented the technical challenges and successes that he has experienced with respect to developing a gene correction model. Finally, the mouse model under development by Jiang Chen (Dennis Roop’s lab) is progressing. Excellent discussion regarding use of other mouse models ensued. In addition, Roger Kaspar announced the development of a new company focused on delivery of candidate agents for the treatment of PC and promising preliminary results were illustrated. We also heard from several new members of our group regarding promising PC-related basic scientific and clinical research. This included presentations by Pierre Coulombe, Exploiting Redundancy as a Therapeutic Strategry, Edel O’Toole, Development of an in Vitro Model of PC and information on some homeopathic treatments, Carl Swartling Treatment of PC with plantar Injections of Botulinum toxin, Todd Ridky (Paul Khavari’s Lab), Keratin Mutations and Squamous Cell Carcinoma Invasion and Caroline Fitchett (Edel O’Toole’s Lab), Functional effects of PC Type I mutations on keratinocyte migration and proliferation. The collegiality was exceptional and the ideas powerful. One distinguished guest, Robin Eady, expressed his congratulations to the group on “the open discussion and generous offers of collaboration” which took place in the discussion periods. Each participant was asked to provide comments and recommendations and that input has impacted the selection of PC Project goals for 2005-2006. We thank all attendees for their useful contributions. We note that several abstracts which focused on PC were selected for the SID sessions and a number of talks were presented by IPCC members. We commend the IPCC members for an exceptional scientific meeting.
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