Climbing to the top - Kidney Camp 2013

"Kidney" CAMP!

The FASEB Science Research Conference on "Renal Hemodynamics: Integrating with the nephron and beyond" took place last week at Vermont Academy in Saxton's River, VT. The meetings were previously called Summer Research Conferences, but they changed that to the quite strange "science research" that sounds more like a branch of philosophy to me.

Anyway, we still call it by its proper name: Summer Kidney Camp. It is a summer camp where spouses send their kidney physiologist halves to wear them out and enable at least a semblance of normal conversation during the rest of the summer. I'm guessing that doesn't work out as well as they hoped in much the same way as summer camp for kids don't.

The Kidney Camp is held every three years, and has a tendency to return to Saxton's River, even if it has been held in other locations once or twice. The main feature is the afternoon-break where we do important sciency stuff, like sitting in the grass, playing softball, football (proper football), basketball, and top rope climbing (which, by the way, is awesome). As far as I can tell most attendees only play sports once every three years for reasons unknown to science, and quite dangerous to be honest. The climbing was probably the safest activity.

The evenings are filled with more science. The fiercely competitive talent show, which was won by one of the supporting acts. The collaborative table tennis, and the very novel fussball table (rumor has it the last one broke three years ago) where any argument can be settled with a well timed spinning of the rods.

Then we have billiards, which makes you look better, but only until you pop the cue-ball off the table. Aaron, who is posing for illustrative purposes only, never did. I promise. Honestly.

In between these important scientific sessions there were some other stuff, where a lot of actual science was actually discussed. Some six to eight hours of lectures per day, and the best poster session in the field. Not only because it is the poster session with a bar that serves local micro-brewery beer, but also because the bar keeps people at the posters and everyone, even invited speakers, bring posters. Luckily it is three years to the next meeting so that I, and my liver, can recover.

FASEB Summer Research Conference - Renal Hemodynamics

Jeff Garvin, introducing the second day of the meeting, if I remember correctly.

If any meeting deserves its own post it is the FASEB Summer Research Conference on Renal Hemodynamics. This year with the sub-title: Mechanisms to understand disease. It has been arranged every three years since 1989. This year, and mostly, it was at the boarding school Vermont Academy in Saxton's River, Vermont, USA.


The walk-way from the dorms to the dining-hall, going in the other direction you get to the auditorium. The dining-hall and auditorium were the only two air-conditioned spaces there, making them quite popular with the participants in the not-quite-100-degree Vermont summer.

As you gather from the name, it is a tightly scoped meeting that draws around 120 people to a half-a-week of 8.30am - 10.20pm scientific sessions. There is a generous lunch break for soccer, softball, paddling, basket ball or discussing papers and collaborations.


In the nicely hot weather, it was very refreshing to go swimming in the river, which was more of a creek than an actual river.


Another pass-time was walking around in the woods, not that I did much of that. This was taken on the way to bathing.

Organisers were Jeff Garvin and David Pollock who did a terrific job. The program was varied and interesting, providing more than usual space to younger investigators. This piqued some senior PIs that weren't invited and therefore stayed at home. Luckily, even they sent, or allowed, their more junior members to participate.

One of the very best part of this meeting is the poster sessions, which start when the bar opens in the evening. There were around 30 posters per session. About twice the size of a poster section at any larger meeting. There was ample time to visit all the posters and discuss science over beer. This was followed by more beer and ping-pong, fussball or billiards. Followed by late night story telling under the starry skies in Vermont, which may or may not have been abetted by the drinking of bourbon.

After a week of that, it is lucky that you can blame it all on the jet-lag when you get home.

Yours,

Michael

Marathon meeting week

I'm sitting at Logan airport in Boston, waiting for my flight home. I'll be waiting for another 5 hours, been here for two hours already. I honestly cannot remember when I was last this worn down. I'm zoning out while the poor waiter at DINE Boston Bar & Grill tries desperately to get me to order.

The week started last Thursday with the Nordic PhD-course on Hypertension arranged as a satellite meeting to the European Society of Hypertension annual meeting in Oslo by the Hypertension Societies of the Nordic countries. A selection of, mostly clinical, hypertension scientists crammed as much teaching as possible in to a day-and-a-half course. The fare was a little lop-sided towards diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, a.k.a. clinical science, with rather less basic science and proper mechanistic research.

Then the actual ESH2010 meeting started Friday evening. The meeting was similarly lop-sided, but provided some really interesting sessions with for example Hans Ibsen on the prognostic importance of changes in albuminuria/proteinuria status. An important happening at the meeting was the ESH answer to the recent findings of an association between ARB-use and cancer. In a meta-analysis of several of the recent mega-trials an increased risk for newly diagnosed cancer of about 0.8% was identified in the treated cohort. This was obviously taken up by the daily press with the usual glee. It is a small difference and it is not something the studies were designed to look for. Indeed when the VALUE trial data was added to the cohort the association disappeard. In short, there is with all probability no association between ARB-use and cancer.

I had the honor of co-chairing a poster session providing important new information on renin release, Angiotensin-A (a new AngII like peptide) and how AngII modulates the interaction between beta-arrestin and nephrin possibly underlying part of the proteinuria in high AngII states. I honestly didn't like the poster session format. There was a guided poster session, which is an ok idea, but they were all at the same time and didn't cover all the posters in each session. This meant that most authors weren't at their posters, giving very little room for discussion. Since the discussions during the poster sessions is usually the best part of these conferences I have to count this as a major fail.

I had my presentation on Monday morning and actually managed to be snared by a new possible collaborator before catching the airport express out of Lillestrøm and jumped on to the Iceland Air flight to Reykjavik and further on to Boston. All in all a very good meeting.

The flights and waiting times afforded me just enough time to put together my talk for Tuesday morning. From Logan I continued by car to Vermont Academy outside Saxtons River. That's about three hours worth. Luckily the bar hadn't closed when I arrived slightly after eleven - neither had the registration desk (although he was packing up). I had a beer, said hello to my colleagues in the APS renal section, got a glass of Bourbon pressed into my hand and woke up at four in the morning, thinking I had overslept. I had a shower, practiced and shortened my talk a couple of times before breakfast, and then the meeting, FASEB Summer Research Conference on Renal Hemodynamics, was suddenly in full swing.

My presentation went over well, and we continued with sessions between 8.30am and 10pm with a long lunch break and a long bar break every day. The best presentation of the conference was Dr. Schnermanns "Musings on Tubuloglomerular Feedback" (that wasn't the title he was given, but I guess that is how it goes). His most convincing slide was the linear relationship between the chance of being wrong or "Ch-bong" and the "Technical Pain Index". I'll have to try to get a copy of his slides, very educational. Today we wrapped up at lunch time and were bussed to Logan.

So, here I am, now with only about 3 hours until boarding. Thanks everyone for a really productive scientific week (If slightly hard on my liver). Now I am going to silently slip into a coma and possibly come out for my defense in August.

Taa