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July 13, 2004 Paris, France Medical Biotechnology Center’s Science is Recognized at International Meetings MBC Assistant Professor, Ilia V. Baskakov, won prizes for two posters at the First International Conference of the European Network of Excellence NeuroPrion held in Paris, France on May 24-28, 2004. His poster entitled “Novel cell-free conversion system: application for assessing the risk of cross-species TSE transmission” won third place. He was also the second author on the first place poster entitled: “De Novo Generation of Mammalian Prions” by G. Legname, I.V. Baskakov, H.O.B. Nguyen, D.Reisner, E.F.Cohen, S.J.DeArmond, S.B. Prusiner. Misfolding and aggregation of prion proteins have been linked to severe human and animal maladies such as bovine spongiform encephalitis, also known as Mad-Cow Disease, and its human counterpart, Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease. The ‘protein only’ hypothesis postulates that the infectious agent of prion diseases, PrPSc, is prion protein (PrP) converted into a beta-sheet-rich conformation. Persistent failure to reconstitute infectivity in vitro has raised growing skepticism regarding the sufficiency of PrP alone to form an infectious agent. The studies presented at the Paris meeting dramatically increase our understanding of the biochemical nature of the prion infectious agent and provide fundamental insight into the mechanisms of infectious prion biogenesis. Dr. Baskakov’s research is focused on developing an in vitro conversion system enabling the reconstitution of an infectious isoform of a prion protein in vitro. Baltimore, MD Heart failure is one of the leading causes of mortality in the United States and a major research focus of Dr. W. Jonathan Lederer, internationally known director of UMBI’s Medical Biotechnology Center. Dr. Lederer recently returned from the United Kingdom after giving the Designated Lecture on Heart & Cardiac Muscle entitled "SR Calcium in heart: Sparks, 'leak' and heart failure” at the annual Physiology Society meeting held in Glasgow, Scotland on March 29, 2004. This lecture is one of three given during the meeting by acknowledged leaders in physiology. In addition to the Physiology Society meeting, Dr. Lederer was also invited to give a special lecture at the British Society for Cardiovascular Research Meeting on Frontiers in Cardiovascular Signaling entitled "Calcium signaling in the heart: basic mechanisms to heart failure” on April 1, 2004. The meeting was held at Manchester University, Manchester, England, UK. While many researchers give multiple talks when traveling abroad, it is unusual to give the equivalent of two keynote addresses in the same trip.
# The University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute was mandated by the state of Maryland legislature in 1985 as "a new paradigm of state economic development in biotech-related sciences." With five major research and education centers across Maryland, UMBI is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of biotechnology. The centers are the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology in Rockville; Center for Biosystems Research in College Park; and Center of Marine Biotechnology, Medical Biotechnology Center, and the Institute of Human Virology, all in Baltimore.
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