Erwin Gelfand, to keynote at Allergy Research & Drug Discovery Conference, San Diego, Jan 31-Feb1

MONROVIA, CA, September 28, 2012 (Press-News.org) Erwin Gelfand will be giving a keynote presentation entitled "Controlling Th2 Differentiation: Novel Targets for Intervention"at the 2nd Allergy Research & Drug Discovery Conference taking place in San Diego, CA on January 31st - February 1st, 2013.

Allergic diseases now affect almost 40% of the population at some time in their lives. The prevalence of the major disease asthma and allergic rhinitis continue to rise together with the increases in food allergy and atopic dermatitis (eczema) really constitutes an ¡°allergy epidemic¡±. In these diseases, major emphasis has been directed to CD4 T cells and Th2 cytokine production, IL-4, IL-5 and IL-13. Despite increasing knowledge of the underlying mechanisms, therapeutic interventions have been limited with many failures in the use of biologics targeting cytokines and chemokines. Corticosteroids remain the leading therapy, inhaled corticosteroid in asthma, oral corticosteroids in food allergy, topical corticosteroids in atopic dermatitis and nasal steroids for allergic rhinitis. In each of these conditions corticosteroids may be limited in efficacy or have associated toxicities. For example, upwards of 45% of asthmatics fail to demonstrate improved lung function with inhaled corticosteroids. This suggests that these diseases are complex and likely involve pathways that are not generally sensitive to the actions of corticosteroids. Using a combination of experimental animal models of asthma, allergic rhinitis and food allergy, novel pathogenic pathways have been defined with translation to the human disease counterparts. Elucidating these pathways has revealed not only their insensitivity to corticosteroids, perhaps accounting for disease refractoriness, but also novel opportunities for intervention.

Benefits of this talk include:
- understanding the complexity of allergic diseases
- defining pathogenic pathways that are insensitive to corticosteroids
- identification of novel pathways contributing to allergic disease
- defining novel targets for intervention

Erwin Gelfand, MD has been Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at National Jewish Health, ranked #1 Respiratory hospital for the last 14 consecutive years by US News and World, for the last 25 years. He is also Vice-Chairman of Pediatrics and Professor of Pediatrics and Immunology at the University of Colorado. For the last 25 years his research has focused on developing animal models of allergic disease and defining critical signaling pathways in lymphocytes, mast cells and basophils. His work has been continuously funded by the NIH and he has published more than 700 articles. In developing an array of animal models his laboratory has investigated numerous agents in the preclinical phase as well as helping understand the mechanism of action of approved drugs to enhance their application. He obtained his MD from McGill University and post-graduate training at Children's hospital and Harvard in Boston.

This conference is also part of the 2nd Novel Immunotherapeutics Summit, which consists of this track and three other tracks:
11th Cytokines & Inflammation
5th Immunotherapeutic & Immunomontoring
Immunogenicity & Immunotoxicity

Over 200 leading industrial and academic experts will present at this two-day summit. The Novel Immunotherapeutics Summit will offer an in-depth examination of the challenges involved in the dynamic and ever-changing field of drug discovery and development.

For more information, please visit http://www.gtcbio.com/allergy

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