Media Releases

International conference at U of T promotes global knowledge sharing to cure disease

June 22, 2011

TORONTO, ON — “Mod­els of Human Dis­eases” is an ambi­tious ini­tia­tive start­ed by two Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to researchers, Drs. Lorelei and Ros­alind Sil­ver­man. The project aims to accel­er­ate the drug dis­cov­ery process by improv­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion between aca­d­e­m­ic research groups, physi­cians, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, and patient advo­ca­cy groups. It is a new and grow­ing forum for glob­al sci­en­tif­ic col­lab­o­ra­tion.

On Tues­day 28th June 2011 the ini­tia­tive will host its sec­ond “Annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Mod­els of Human Dis­eases con­fer­ence” at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and all bio­med­ical research sci­en­tists are invit­ed to attend to present and dis­cuss their work. Although the con­fer­ence is being held at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to it will also be an online con­fer­ence so that researchers from all over the world can con­tribute eas­i­ly and in an envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious way.

The details of the con­fer­ence are as fol­lows:

Event: Sec­ond Annu­al Inter­na­tion­al Mod­els of Human Dis­eases Con­fer­ence

Date: June 28th 2010

Time: 8.30 am – 7 pm

Place: Stone Lob­by, Med­ical Sci­ences Build­ing, 1 King’s Col­lege Cir­cle, Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, Toron­to, Ontario, Cana­da.

For more details go to: www.mhdconference.com

Speak­ers at the con­fer­ence will include Dr. Peter Backx, Annie Cart­man, Dr. Robert Ger­lai, Dr. Avrum Gotlieb, Dr. Jeff Hen­der­son, Dr. Mingyao Liu

Dr. Cin­di Mor­shead, Dr. Eric Ostertag, Dr. Peter J. O’Brien, Dr. Peter Wells.

The mis­sion of the ‘Mod­els of Human Dis­eases’ project is to pro­mote the gen­er­a­tion, appli­ca­tion and archiv­ing of effec­tive ani­mal mod­els of dis­ease and to dis­sem­i­nate this knowl­edge world­wide. The pur­pos­es of the project are sci­en­tif­ic, tech­ni­cal, and edu­ca­tion­al. It aims to con­nect sci­en­tists across the world with physi­cians, biotech­nol­o­gy and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, as well as patient advo­ca­cy groups, to accel­er­ate the dis­cov­ery and devel­op­ment of life­sav­ing drugs. As Pro­fes­sor Richard Hegele, Chair of the Depart­ment of Lab­o­ra­to­ry Med­i­cine and Patho­bi­ol­o­gy says, “the abil­i­ty for inter­est­ed indi­vid­u­als from around the world to engage in infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge exchange in mod­els of human dis­ease is time­ly. Peo­ple at all lev­els of exper­tise and expe­ri­ence stand to ben­e­fit from par­tic­i­pat­ing in the dis­course and explor­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties to form or strength­en research col­lab­o­ra­tions.”

The project is run by vol­un­teers with sup­port from spon­sors. If you would like to get involved by con­tribut­ing data to the project, vol­un­teer­ing or pro­vid­ing spon­sor­ship please vis­it: www.mhdconference.com.

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If you’d like more infor­ma­tion about this project please con­tact Dr. Ros­alind Sil­ver­man or Dr. Lorelei Sil­ver­man at:+1-(416)-783‑3892, or by e‑mail at: lorelei.silverman.gavrila@utoronto.ca or rosalind.silverman.gavrila@utoronto.ca.