Early last month we attended the 2014 UMDF Symposium , held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The UMDF does a great job in providing quite a unique opportunity to promote the interaction between mitochondrial disease researchers and clinicians with families and patients.
This year was not an exception and we really enjoyed the 4-day meeting under a (mostly) blue sky in beautiful Pittsburgh. It was our first visit to the city and it was really worth it.
The amount of high-quality state-of-the-art talks was incredible, and we got to keep in touch with many exciting research in mitochondrial biology and disease. Talks ranged from mitochondrial postranslational modifications and their importance in mitochondrial function, to advances in our understanding of mitochondrial complex structure and important updates on clinical trials and potential new treatments, such as the promising use of TALENs technology (a.k.a. selective molecular scissors) by the Moraes lab to eliminate altered mitochondrial DNA.
The Quintana Lab presented a poster on our latest research on the characterization of the molecular and histological changes in different vulnerable neuronal populations in an animal model of Leigh Syndrome. The turnaround and input was excellent, which will be extremely useful for our future research and grant applications.
Also, it was great to meet the guys from the Northwest Mitochondrial Research Guild, kudos to them for the great work they do in raising awareness and promoting mitochondrial research in the Pacific NW and also, congratulations to Beverley Dancy, from the Mogan-Sedensky lab at Seattle Children’s Research Insitute for her 1st-prize poster and oral presentation!
As I was saying… a great experience.
And we also got to see some Pittsburgh’s local fauna 😀