| Medicine home | About | Prospective students | Current students | Research | Alumni | Contact us |
| Staff (Intranet) | Staff directory | A-Z index | Site map |
| Medicine home | About | Prospective students | Current students | Research | Alumni | Contact us |
| Staff (Intranet) | Staff directory | A-Z index | Site map |
|
|
Healthy Start for a Healthy Life: The Wintour’s TaleThe Satellite Conference of the 5th World Congress of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) was recently held in Melbourne at the Marriott Hotel on November 1 & 2 2007. The conference was to celebrate the distinguished career of one of Melbourne’s finest scientists Professor Marelyn Wintour FAA for her outstanding career in fetal physiology and was aptly named “Healthy Start for a Healthy Life: The Wintour’s Tale”. Marelyn was one of the first scientists to establish the clear link between the early origins of adult health and disease, particularly the association of stress in early pregnancy and the predisposition for cardiovascular disease. This helped pave the way for the major research focus in basic and clinical medicine we now know as the “Developmental Origins of Health and Disease” or DOHaD. Marelyn’s pivotal contributions have now extended to other disciplines since many diseases can be traced back to our embryonic, fetal and early childhood development. The gala event was “The Wintour’s Tale” dinner held at the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne’s CBD to celebrate Marelyn’s career with 130 guests attending from Brisbane, New South Wales, South Australia and WA and as far a field as Guangzhou, China, Oregon and Alberta, USA. The Georgian interior provided a welcoming and relaxed atmosphere assisted by the South American band as guests arrived for pre-dinner discussion and refreshment. A fine mixture of humorous and thought provoking anecdotes from the speakers kept the audience entertained along with the revolving slide show of memorable events from Marelyn’s career. For further information about Marelyn’s career please download the attached article by New Scientist Journalist, Tim Thwaites chronicling Marelyn’s career. Judy Whitworth was superb as Master of Ceremonies introducing the guest speakers including colleagues Eugenie Lumbers and Karen Moritz. Steven Wesselingh, the new Dean of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences provided his insights into Marelyn’s distinguished career comparing it to body surfing - paddling out to catch and ride a wave and be prepared to hop off ready catch the next! Short addresses from family members; John, Daniel and Karen Coghlan, were the highlight of the evening, illustrating the career life-balance that must be achieved to raise a family whilst at the same time developing a successful career. These talks illustrated the importance of a strong life partner and the joys of loving children and grandchildren.
The conference was held in the Marriott Hotel, in Melbourne’s CBD and was convenient for interstate and international delegates. Marelyn has always been a keen promoter of young scientists in research. The one and half day conference had an excellent mixture of research and social opportunities so that young scientist could meet and talk about their research to peers and experienced scientists in an interdisciplinary environment. As with the conference in 2006, a dominant feature of the second day was the poster session which attracted considerable discussion and a vibrant “hum” that is now synonymous with HSLri conferences. This scientific conference is often the first exposure students get to a major conference where they have the opportunity to defend their work amongst peers. True to our objectives of promoting young scientists the organisers raised a large prize pool for this year’s conference through the kind donations of sponsors including Landes Bioscience Publishing USA and Monash University. This allowed us to offer six awards including four (predoctoral) Student Awards of $200 and two Early Career Scientist Awards of $300. Unfortunately not everyone can present an oral presentation and talks were selected on the basis of theme so that a comprehensive interdisciplinary program could be conducted. Awards were therefore awarded irrespective of whether the presentation was an oral or poster communication.
The themes for this year’s conference were again diverse and have been extended to include topics including inflammation and oxidative stress and several key areas unique to Monash University:
The conference attracted a healthy number of international participants and interstate registrants and a larger number of these attended the celebratory dinner for Marelyn held on the Thursday evening (1 November).
Congratulations to the winners of the research awards.
Landes Biosciences Early Career Awards were presented to:
MonashUniversityand Landes Biosciences Student Awards were presented to:
Conference Proceeding Day 1 of the conference was opened by John Bertram and was dedicated entirely to the Wintour’s Tale and featured two sessions on Fetal Physiology with excellent pesentations from close colleagues including Kandiah Jeyaseelan (Singapore) Bernhard Breier, Laura Bennet (Auckland), and closer to home, Eugenie Lumbers and Karen Moritz. Marelyn provided interesting data on clock genes and how diurnal variation influence gene expression.
The second day kicked-off with an opening address by Kent Thornburg from Portland Ohio and introduction to the session dedicated to Brain, Cognition and Behaviour. The first address by Bruce Tonge eloquently described the major issues surrounding the early origins of depression in young people, possible causes, time frame of symptom onset and the importance of early detection. Anthony Hannan of the Howard Flory Institute followed-up with an equally insightful presentation on the gene and environment connection. These keynote addresses set the scene for the research presentations that followed on autism and cognitive development by Nicole Rinehart, Deanne Thompson, Hannah Palliser and Marie Gibbs.
The Session on “Fetal Programming” followed, was very well attended and included discussions of factors affecting the future healthy life in both human babies and animal models. Attendees agreed that the final presentation in this session by Sue Sayers on the Aboriginal Birth Cohort Study 1987 – 2007, was particularly good, especially as she encountered some problems with the computer, and so gave a terrific summary of the findings, and placed the entire session in context.
The final session on “Making a Healthy Baby” focused on early environmental factors that influence later development into adult life. Alan Trounson started the ball rolling with an insightful update on state-of-the-art and affordable IVF technologies for underdeveloped countries in sub Saharan Africa as well as some new stem cell technologies and applications in lung fibrosis and regenerative medicine. This set the scene for superb presentations by Marianne Tare, Prue Cowin, Catherine Coulter and Nicole Smith detailing how in-utero challenges of growth restriction or exposure to environmental toxins may predispose to long term ill-health. For further reading and Author contact details the abstract book is free to download. Download the conference Abstract book.
All registrants agreed that the sessions were outstanding with overall comments praising the diversity and accessibility of the presentations and posters and the excellent networking opportunities provided. This is at the heart of the HSLri key objectives. The delegate mix was an even one of student and senior scientists. The spin off from this event was a further increase in membership for the fledgling research initiative with a steady-state cohort of over 220 members.
The committee did an excellent job of organisation taking 18 months in the planning. This included intensive fund raising activity and for this we are grateful to our sponsors. If you were unable to attend this years’ conference, well…there is always next year!
Stephen Bird |
