VOLUME 3 - ISSUE 2 - MEETINGS REPORT

The 4th BPS focused meeting was held in Leicester (11-12th April) on Cell Signalling. This was the planned follow-up to the inaugural James Black Conference on GPCRs and Ligand-gated Ion Channels. The meeting was organized by Andrew Tobin with the able assistance of Fiona Marshall and John Challis. The event was a complete sell-out, with a total of 265 people from all parts of the world (including 166 non-members) assembling in Leicester for what was a truly memorable meeting.

The meeting was held at the Gilbert Murray Conference Centre which turned out to be an excellent venue - although when I first arrived, I was slightly concerned that the local audiovisual people were trying to assemble the main screen in the auditorium from what looked like an IKEA flat pack and the usual associated puzzle sheet (otherwise known as Instructions!). Andrew was quietly confident and, at the time, was more concerned with how he was going to display the 82 posters that had been submitted to the meeting. Needless to say, both feats were achieved successfully (and as far as I could see there were no obvious bits missing from the screen). It was also a credit to the local helpers and our poster board supplier that the auditorium was cleared of all chairs and the poster boards assembled in less than an hour at the end of the first day’s symposium presentations. Meanwhile, early arrivals to the evening poster session were pointed in the direction of the free bar, which kept everyone happy and ensured a highly successful poster session. For my part, I managed two beers and six posters during the two hours allocated. I have already suggested that we need to schedule more poster time in future, although I may need to adjust my beers: posters ratio if I am going to get round all 82 posters next time!

The programme was made up of a mix of invited speakers and short talks chosen from the submitted abstracts.

Key speakers included Graeme Milligan, Richard Clark (USA), Sudha Shenoy (USA), Jill Baker, Richard Eglen (USA), Jeff Benovic (USA), Philip Strange, Martin Lohse (Germany), John Challis, Peter Downes, Caroline Dart and Tullio Pozzan (Italy). All delegates were resident at the Gordon Murray Conference Centre and the extensive discussions that took place throughout the two days made for an outstanding occasion. Many congratulations to Andrew, John and Fiona. The plan is to run this meeting every two years, so watch out for the 2007 programme!

For those of you who have kindly enquired over the current state of my car (you will remember in my last report that it had suffered a major set-back in the waterworks department on the return from Newcastle), it successfully made it to Leicester. However, I have to confess that my difficulties with maps continues and I can confirm that it is not possible to take a shortcut via the University playing fields (well it looked to me as if the two roads connected) and get into the Gilbert Murray Hall by car!

I have just set the programme for Cambridge and you will notice that we have moved to nine symposia per meeting. Ten are planned for the winter meeting in London when the Clinical Section will next join us. This gives an excellent opportunity for the SIGs to organize sessions at our major meetings. The Cambridge meeting is also a joint event with the Canadian Society and I think that we have the makings of an excellent three days. We are increasing the extent to which we interact with other societies. The British Inflammation Research Association will be joining us for a day in Cambridge, and the Nitric Oxide Forum will join us in London. In the future, we expect our main winter meeting to be held in the South-East (probably London) at a fixed time before Christmas (although the 75 th anniversary meeting in 2006 will be in Oxford) and the summer meeting will encompass major international or joint meetings with other Societies.

In August 2006, IUPHAR will meet in Beijing during our 75 th Anniversary year: watch this space for details of the Anniversary year events. In July 2007 the BPS, together with the Physiological Society, the Biochemical Society and the British Neuroscience Association, will hold a FASEB-style joint meeting at the Scottish Conference and Exhibition Centre in Glasgow. This is an exciting prospect which, if successful, will become a biennial event.

In July 2008, BPS will also be hosting EPHAR 2008 at the Manchester Conference Centre.

Meshed into these major events will be focused meetings and James Black Conferences. We already have plans in 2006 for two focused meetings: one on Inflammation and another entitled “High Throughput Pharmacology?”.

I welcome other suggestions from SIG coordinators or individuals. Very shortly SIG organizers will be asked to nominate symposia suggestions for the 75 th anniversary meeting in Oxford and for the FASEB-style meeting in Glasgow. So put your thinking caps on and forward suggestions to either myself or your SIG convener (see the web site for details).

See you in Cambridge…

Steve Hill