EVER newsletter
August 29, 2006

Plans for the EVER Congress 2006 are now well and truly in place and it promises to be better than ever!

September 1: Early registration deadline. Go to the members section for registration.

Those of you who will be attending the EVER Congress 2006 are strongly encouraged to refer to the website for details of housing links, transfers and general information about Vilamoura.

The Congress programme is very rich and varied this year. We have a range of Courses, Workshops and Special Interest Symposia, as well as Free Paper and Poster Sessions. All decisions about abstract acceptance should now have been communicated to first authors. Download the EVER 2006 Final Programme from the EVER homepage. Please refer to it to check your abstract allocations.

All presenting first authors of Free Papers or SIS are respectfully reminded to adhere strictly to allocated timings. Many Free Paper sessions contain a number of Rapid-Fire presentations, which allow the authors to summarise the work presented on their Posters. Poster guidelines and Guidelines for speakers are available on the EVER website.

EVER would particularly like to draw your attention to the five Courses, scheduled on Wednesday 4th October, 2006, at 2pm, which are an excellent opportunity to gain further training and represent fantastic value for money at 40 EUR. Book now to avoid disappointment, as space is limited.

There is no doubt that the EVER 2006 Congress promises to be a very special occasion indeed, as we have an exceptional line-up of internationally renowned Keynote Speakers. In this edition of the eNewsletter we will take the opportunity to welcome and present some of these speakers to you.

We are honoured and delighted to welcome the Director of the National Eye Institute, NIH, USA, Professor Paul Sieving, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc. (honorary).
Professor Sieving will be known to many of you by name and reputation. What may not be so well known is that he also attended Yale Law School, before graduating from the University of Illinois Medical School. He obtained his Doctorate at the University of Illinois Graduate School in 1981. His residency in Ophthalmology was at the University of Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary, Chicago, and he did a Medical Fellowship in Inherited Retinal Degenerations with Eliot L. Berson, at Harvard. He then went to the University of Michigan Department of Ophthalmology, where he was initially Assistant Professor from 1985, and subsequently the Paul R. Lichter Professor of Ophthalmic Genetics, until 2001. He was the Founding Director of the Center for Retinal and Macular Degenerations, Univ. Michigan. Since 2001 he has been the Director of NEI. Professor Sieving's research interests are in genetics and therapy development for human retinal dystrophies and retinal electrophysiology. He has published extensively and has been Principal Investigator on a large number of research grants, both at the University of Michigan and at NIH. He works clinically in the area of human hereditary retinal and macular dystrophies.
We are particularly pleased that Professor Sieving will take part in EVER 2006 in view of the 'ever' closer EVER/ ARVO links that are being forged!

Professor Nick Galloway , Surgeon Emeritus at the Eye Department, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham, and former President of EVER, will speak on 'The evolution of the electrical responses from the eye'. He plans to outline the way in which these minute electrical changes have been gradually elucidated over many years and their clinical significance, leading up to the recent work on the multifocal technique.
Professor Galloway is the author of numerous books, chapters and papers on the electrophysiology of vision and is a world-renowned authority in this field. He is a former Master of The Oxford Ophthalmological Congress (1988-1990) and former President of the International Society for Clinical Electrophysiology of Vision (2004-2005).
Professor Galloway says that he first developed an interest in electronics in his teens, making use of ex army and RAF equipment which was widely available at that time, and subsequently did night school electronics. His greatly respected mentor was Geoffrey Arden, with whom he worked for a time at the Institute of Ophthalmology, and with whom he found the very first component of the ERG in the human. He also found great inspiration in the teaching of the late Fergus Campbell during his time at Cambridge.

Professor Erik De Clercq received his M.D. degree in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1972 both at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (K.U.Leuven) in Belgium. After having spent two years at Stanford University Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow, he returned to the K.U.Leuven Medical School, where he became docent (assistant professor) in 1973, professor in 1975, and full professor in 1977. Prof. E. De Clercq served as chairman of the Department of Microbiology from 1986-1991. Since 1999 he is again serving as chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. In 1985, he became President of the Rega Foundation and, in 1986, Chairman of the Directory Board of the Rega Institute for Medical Research, two positions which he still holds.
He is a titular member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine and the Academia Europaea, and has also held the Prof. P. De Somer Chair of Microbiology at the K.U.Leuven.
Prof. De Clercq's scientific achievements are in the antiviral chemotherapy field, and, in particular, the development of new antiviral agents for the treatment of various viral infections, including AIDS. He has (co)-discovered a number of antiviral drugs, currently used in the treatment of various virus infections, such as herpes simplex (valaciclovir), herpes zoster (brivudin), AIDS (stavudine), CMV (cytomegalovirus) infections (cidofovir), HBV (hepatitis B virus) infections (adefovir), and HIV infections (AIDS) (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, marketed as VireadTM, and, in combination with emtricitabine, as TruvadaTM.

We are also delighted to welcome Professor Anthony T Moore, who will be talking about the molecular genetic basis of the various forms of cone dysfunction and cone dystrophy and how this knowledge improves our understanding of disease mechanisms and possible therapeutic targets.

Tony Moore graduated from Oxford University Medical School in 1975 and after junior posts in Ophthalmology at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London and the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford moved to the residency training programme at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London. He then undertook a two-year fellowship in Paediatric Ophthalmology at the Hospital for Sick Children in London and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. After his return to the UK he was appointed Lecturer in Clinical Ophthalmology, a post held jointly at the Institute of Ophthalmology and the Institute of Child Health in London. In 1986 he moved to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge as a consultant with a special interest in paediatric ophthalmology. In 2001 he moved back to London when he was appointed to the Duke Elder Chair of Ophthalmology at the Institute of Ophthalmology, UCL London. He has honorary consultant appointments at Moorfields Eye Hospital and the Hospital for Children,Great Ormond Street, London, where he has his clinical practice. He is Director of the Paediatric Ophthalmology Service at Moorfields Eye Hospital. His main research interests are in inherited eye disease particularly those causing childhood visual impairment.

We are pleased that Professor Charlotte Reme, Professor of Ophthalmology, Lab of Retinal Cell Biology, University of Zurich, will speak on the subject of 'light damage and retinal degenerations: do models tell the truth?' Professor Reme will present some of her research on light damage (short term white light- and blue light – induced lesions) and put that data in the framework of retinal degenerations. She will discuss the relevance of light damage in view of recent findings on increased light sensitivity in some animal models of RP (retinitis pigmentosa) and in view of the recently discovered strong genetic component of AMD (age related macular degeneration). The newly discovered genes for AMD necessitate entirely new epidemiological studies on light exposure history and AMD, since this variable inevitably was not included in any previous epidemiological studies addressing the question of light exposure and AMD enhancement.

Professor Reme graduated from Medical School in Tubingen and Hamburg, Germany, and did Junior residencies in internal medicine, surgery and gynaecology. She also did a Residency in the Institute of Pathology, Wurzburg, Germany and a Residency in the University Eye Clinic Wurzburg. After this she undertook research at the University Eye Clinic Zürich and was a postdoctoral fellow with Richard W. Young, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, before establishing a new retinal cell biology lab in Zurich.

Her scientific interests have included photoreceptor renewal, the possible role of autophagy in photoreceptor renewal and the role of the retina as input stage for and modifier of input to the central circadian clock. More recently she has focused on the mechanisms of light induced retinal degeneration, including the role of the mediating chromophores, exposure conditions, thresholds, wavelengths leading to lesions, and the death genes and death signalling resulting in photoreceptor and pigment epithelial cell death.

Of her motivations in research she says that the hope of finding a very small needle in the huge haystack of retinal degenerations has been a major factor. She took immense inspiration from her postdoctoral time at UCLA with Richard Young, who was an enormously imaginative and innovative thinker. Attending ARVO and forging friendships and collaborations has been particularly inspiring for her and has lead to the great satisfaction of working with friends and colleagues. In terms of her achievements, Professor Reme is particularly proud of establishing a basic research lab within a clinical setting in Zurich and believes that there is a strong argument to be made for full time research by clinicians, who can make a valuable contribution to basic science research.

The citation impact factor of Acta Ophthalmologica has risen to 1.58 and Acta is now 15th of 44 Medline listed journals in ophthalmology and eye research. The cited half-life of articles in Acta is exceptionally long, over 10 years and the Archives of Ophthalmology is the only other ophthalmology journal with such a high ratio of articles with ongoing impact for a very long time.
Acta has the second largest circulation of ophthalmology journals in Europe. Acta and EVER are well positioned to proceed towards a goal of becoming the premier journal and congress of ophthalmology and eye research, on par with IOVS and ARVO. For this to happen we must submit our best work to EVER and Acta and encourage our colleagues to do likewise.

Einar Stefansson
Chief Editor, Acta Ophthalmologica

Agenda
 1. President's address
 2. Minutes of the General Assembly 2005
 3. Report of the General Secretary
 4. Report of the Programme Secretary
 5. Report of the Treasurer, approval of the accounts 2005, budget for 2007
 6. Newsletters ; EVER Journal
 7. Results of the elections
 8. Presentation of the BOARD 2006-2007
 9. President Elect, Vice President Elect, Programme Secretary
10. Honorary Members
11. Presentation and Report of the Scientific Sections meetings
12. Future congresses
13. Prize giving
14. Miscellanea

Mark your agenda !
The business meetings of the 11 sections will take place all on Friday October 6 at 19:00 in different meetingrooms. The exact meetingrooms will be announced onsite.

A new area for Job advertisements is available at the EVER website.
Your non-commmercial job advertisements are welcome.