December 4, 2009
Matching Academia and Industry for Drug Repositioning
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD

Drug repositioning, or finding new uses for drugs originally designed for another purpose, has become more important recently as many pharmaceutical companies are seeing their drug pipelines dry up. With the high cost of drug research and development, drug repositioning offers a way to explore these previously shelved assets. The Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Pharmaceutical Assets Portal is a tool that aims to match researchers’ scientific knowledge of targets and diseases with the repositioning needs of the pharmaceutical industry to potentially increase the number of approved drugs for alternative uses. This half-day conference will bring together leaders in the pharmaceutical industry, government, and research to explore current drug repositioning efforts.

December 10 - 11, 2009
Rare Cancers with High Mortality: Challenges for Cancer Prevention and Treatment
Office of Rare Diseases and National Cancer Institute
Bethesda, MD

This two-day workshop for scientists and clinicians from academia, medical centers, technology, industry, and government and patient advocates will promote discussion of the various issues and special challenges associated with cancer detection, diagnostics, prognostics, and treatment of rare cancers with high mortality rates. This is an excellent venue to identify strategies to improve screening and detection that may lead to prevention and better treatments for these rare cancers. This workshop will also facilitate scientific collaborations and interactions, examine new technologies, and build new research programs in this emerging field.

December 16, 2009
Nutrient Biomarkers Analytical Methodology: Vitamin D Workshop
Office of Dietary Supplements
Bethesda, MD

Given the uncertainties in vitamin D measurement, the NIH/ODS will host this one-day workshop to evaluate the state of analytical methods. The intent of the workshop is to develop strategies for resolving inconsistencies between results obtained following quantitative determination of selected nutrients in biological materials such as serum when different measurement techniques are used. The desired outcomes of this meeting are to identify strengths and weaknesses of analytical approaches available for the quantification of the nutritional biomarker of Vitamin D status, circulating 25(OH)D in biological samples and to discuss analytical methods, including criteria for selection of method(s); role of reference methods and samples; sample preparation and interpretation of results. The workshop will consist of a series of short, focused podium presentations interspersed with open discussion sessions on the currently available analytical methods and interpretation of findings. A final session will summarize the discussions, identify knowledge gaps, and suggest a research agenda for future studies.

January 11 - 12, 2010
Advancing Rare Disease Research: The Intersection of Patient Registries, Biospecimen Repositories and Clinical Data
Office of Rare Diseases
Bethesda, MD

The workshop objective is to discuss the development of an infrastructure for an internet-based platform with common data elements utilizing a federated rare disease registry able to incorporate existing rare disease registries; patient organizations with no registry looking to establish one; and patients with no affiliation with a support group looking to belong to a registry. The expected outcome of the workshop is to gain acceptance of the concept of a federated rare disease patient registry and participation in creating this patient registry from as many curators of patient registries and other stakeholders as possible. Participating stakeholders will harmonize standardized common data elements, vocabulary, and open source software to enable the exchange of data and information to facilitate research collaborations.

February 2 - 4, 2010
NIH State-of-the-Science Conference:  Enhancing Use and Quality of Colorectal Cancer Screening
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD

To provide healthcare providers, patients, policy makers, and the general public with a comprehensive assessment of how colorectal cancer screening and surveillance are most appropriately implemented, monitored, and evaluated for average-risk populations in the United States, the National Cancer Institute and the Office of Medical Applications of Research of the National Institutes of Health will convene a this meeting, to assess the available scientific evidence.

Spring, 2010
International Conference on Malignancies in AIDS and Other Acquired Immunodeficiencies
National Cancer Institute
Bethesda, MD

This conference, which takes place once every one to two years, is the only forum that is solely focused on presentation of basic, epidemiologic, and clinical aspects of research on malignancies in HIV-infected and other immunosuppressed individuals. The ICMAOI is designed to facilitate the exchange of information between laboratory and clinical investigators to accelerate the translation of basic scientific discoveries into clinical applications. The ICMAOI agenda focuses on advances in clinical investigation of malignant diseases associated with HIV and other acquired immunodeficiency states.