EVER newsletter
December 1, 2006

A Word from the Programme Secretary:

EVER 2006 was our most successful meeting yet with over 800 registered participants. It is thanks to all of you for making this such a great meeting both scientifically and socially. It is always good to meet up with old friends and colleagues but EVER is also a wonderful place to make new friends and forge new collaborations. For the first time this year we held 5 EVER courses. Feedback from you has stimulated us to provide more detailed information about the courses and in 2007 we shall be grading them from beginner through to advanced level. We have also designed a feedback form so that we can find out what you thought about the courses and individual scientific sessions. We never want to stop in our quest to improve EVER year upon year.

In 2006 we made a concerted effort to increase our paediatric profile by welcoming the European Paediatric and Ophthalmology Society and inviting Professor Tony Moore to deliver a keynote lecture on Retinal dystrophies. Furthermore the General Assembly voted unanimously to include Paediatrics in the section of Neuro-ophthalmology and Strabismus so there is now a home for all you budding Paediatric Ophthalmologists. Information Technology was represented for the first time with Pamela Sieving running an excellent course and presenting a poster on IT resources in Ophthalmology. Have we forgotten other subspecialties? Should we include Oculoplastics into one of our existing sections? Let us know your views.

We were fortunate to have 2 of our keynote lectures sponsored by AER and Ophthalmic Research and for the first time we celebrated the association of EVER with ACTA Scandinavia with an ACTA Keynote lecture given by Professor Paul Sieving. We strengthened our association with ARVO, OOG, FRO and ISCEV and have already received requests for more sessions at EVER 2007.

It is always interesting to look at the nationalities of those attending EVER and in 2006 we saw a big increase in the number of non-Europeans attending. Professor Jialiang Zhao gave a keynote lecture about Ophthalmology in China and we hope that EVER can play a role in encouraging collaborations across the Continents.

I have sat on the board of EVER since its creation and have very much enjoyed planning the annual meetings. It is now time to hand this responsibility to Professor Tero Kivelä who will be the next EVER Programme Secretary. I am confident that EVER 2007 will be ever bigger and better and look forward to seeing you all at Portoroz.

POSTER prizes

Anatomy/Cell Biology
Isabel PINILLA, Zaragosa, Spain
Cornea/Ocular Surface
Dorota SZCZESNA, Wroclaw, Poland
Glaucoma
Bernd Andreas KAMPPETER, Mannheim, Germany
Immunology/Microbiology
Ales NEUWIRTH, Doubek, Czech Republic
Lens and Cataract
Salina SIDDIQUI, Leeds, UK
Molecular Biology/Genetics/Epidemiology
Vignesh RAJA, Crewe, UK
Neuro-ophthalmology/Strabismology
Marc SCHARGUS, Wuerzburg, Germany
Pathology/Oncology
Guy MISSOTTEN, Leiden, The Netherlands
Physiology/Biochemistry/Pharmacology
Asan KOCHKOROV, Basel, Switzerland
Retina/Vitreous
João OLIVEIRA FERREIRA, Coimbra, Portugal
Vision Sciences/Electrophysiol/Physiol Optic
Michelle MCKERRAL, Montreal, Canada

TFOS Travel grants
Tear Film and Ocular Surface Society awarded the best 3 abstracts submitted by young researchers in the cornea section to:

In vivo confocal microscopy in limbal epithelial damage
Mario NUBILE, Chieti, Italy
Inhibition of inflammatory corneal lymphangiogenesis by an anti-VEGFR3 antibody mF4-31C1
Felix BOCK, Erlangen, Germany
Gene therapy promotes corneal graft survival
Rita Barcia, Boston, USA

SIS awards 2006
Section Physiol/Pharm/Biochem
Section Pathology
Sections Mol Biol and Neuro

Read the report 2006 of your section.
If you are logged in on the EVER website, click here to access your section news.

Nominations for Secretary General are requested from the EVER Membership. Please feedback your suggestions to your Section EVER Board Member, with a short 5 sentence paragraph of biographical details, reasons for nomination and a photo.
Deadline: December 31, 2006

EVER is planning to run a Photo Caption Competition in the 2007 e-Newsletter coming out in the first quarter of 2007. We are keen to receive digital images of members and guests from the EVER 2006 Congress, as well as images of Vilamoura and the Congress venue. Suggestions for witty captions will be accepted. No libellous material please!

Mark your agenda !
The 10th EVER congress will be held in Portoroz, Slovenia from October 3 to 6, 2007.

Suggestions for scientific Special Interest Symposium and Course proposals for the EVER 2007 Congress are welcome and actively solicited amongst the Sections. The deadline for submission of outlines is December 31, 2006 to EVER.

If you are logged in on the EVER website, you can submit a SIS or a COURSE. If you want to submit a keynote, you can do so through your section chairman.

EVER symposium at Asia/ARVO 2007
Singapore, Saturday, 3 March 2007 08:30 – 10:00

State-of-the-art Research and Development in Ophthalmology and Visual Science

• Uwe Pleyer (Berlin, Germany): Gene therapy: A way for corneal transplantation?
• Saw Seang Mei (Singapore): A cohort study of environmental predictors of the development of myopia.
• Jost B. Jonas (Heidelberg, Germany): The Beijing Eye Study: Clinical implications for retina and glaucoma.
• Volkan Dayanir (Aydin, Turkey): Blood flow changes in pseudoexfoliation syndrome and glaucoma

In Memoriam Prof. Dr. Ir. Henk Spekreijse (1940 – 2006)

Although a biophysicist by education his main interest was in the field of visual neurosciences and I remember his innovating contributions, in the seventies of last century, in the field of visual evoked potentials despite the pessimistic view at that time on the use of brain potentials and EEGs existing among neurologists and psychiatrists. He and the excellent group around him have ever since greatly contributed to the understanding of visual processing in the retina and visual cortex of the goldfish, monkey and man. He also was a main initiator of functional MRI in the Netherlands.

Moreover he was a great organizer and together with the late Prof. G. Bleeker, co-founder of The Netherlands Ophthalmic Research Institute (NORI) in the mid-seventies of last century. The aim of this institute was bringing together basic scientists and clinicians to perform translational research in numerous fields of ophthalmology. After Prof. Bleeker’s retirement in 1986 he was the stimulating scientific director of the institute till 1995. He has given the heads of the departments a good deal of freedom and mental support. In addition to this he was one of the initiators of the School of Neuroscience Amsterdam which functioned as a centre of excellence for post-graduate students. He was further a leading person in ISCEV. Since the restructuring of the European organizations for ophthalmic research, in the late nineties of last century, he got actively involved and was one of the founding fathers of EVER and functioned as president in the year 1999-2000. He was organizer or co-organizer of conferences, too many to be spelled out here, and Chairman of the editorial board of Vision Research. The dissolution of ‘his’ NORI and transformation to an Academy institute for neurosciences without him being involved really disappointed if not distressed him in the last years of his brilliant career which now ended by his too early death.

For some people science is passion; the ultimate fulfillment of life. Henk Spekreijse was such a charismatic and passionate scientist. He for instance really hated vacations and the story goes that after his retirement he had more than five years of unconsumed days off. His wife Yvonne, his two daughters and also his colleagues inside and outside the Institute tried to convince him that vacation is not too bad and a good way to shift away from work for a while. However he always opposed to that by saying that it is just a waste of time. Luckily enough he liked conferences and meetings and so he nevertheless has seen quite a bit of the world.

We all knew that he had a rather fragile health condition for more than 25 years another reason to take some rest every now and than. He hated to talk about that and certainly did not want to follow up this advice. In his death announcement it was phrased ‘No more (physical) constraints‘. That really characterized his life; fragile health but an undefeatable mental strength which made him the eminent scientist and leader whose scientific legacy will be remembered for ever.

Together with his mother, we all hope that he may rest in peace and that God may bless his beloved wife Yvonne his children Stefanie and Dieuwertje and his two grand-children.

His colleague and friend,
Prof. Dr. Gijs F.J.M. Vrensen

The first edition of the 1 million EUR Antonio Champalimaud Science Award will be given to contributions to the alleviation of visual problems, primarily in developing countries. Guidelines as well as candidate entry forms are available from www.fchampalimaud.org. The deadline for candidate entries is December 31, 2006.

This two-day conference will provide delegates with a comprehensive look at the use of somatic gene transfer and gene knockdown in retina disease.
SESSION TOPICS AND SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
• AAV-mediated Gene Transfer: Bill Hauswirth
• BBS/Ciliopathies: Nico Katsanis
• RPGR/RPGRIP/CEP290: Anand Swaroop
• Photoreceptor and other Cilia: Eric Pierce
• Usher Syndrome: David Williams
• adRP and RNA Interference/Nanoparticles: Muna Naash
• Animal Models of Macular Degeneration: Kang Zhang

Contributions for poster presentations are invited by February 2, 2007.
For full details and to submit an abstract visit: www.visionresearch-conference.elsevier.com