IiMER International Conference Week London 2019

Whether there’s enough Brits there and why they aren’t us up for debate but it looks like an absolute stellar cast of scientists, not just from America either. So well done IIME, I think they’re a bit lost Ito of actual research direction themselves since rituximab but this year conference looks fabulous.

I think It is a bit odd that it’s NIH involved & Solve promoting this whereas I’m guessing our MRC don’t attend and our charities havent mentioned it. I personally always saw the CMRC conference as an attempt to sideline Iimes already established fabulous conference and to essentially show case the MRC funded stuff and get a perhaps more “broad church”narrative out there (bearing in mind Esther Crawley , intent on behaviour approach was the top CFS dog for the first years). Imo just promoting the Iime conferences instead of setting up a different one would have been as helpful because the actual science and purely biomedical research for complex illness invest in ME manage to pull off is precisely what I’d love Uk “interested” professionals, the MRC and young PHD students etc to see and be engaging with. Apart from the Norwich researchers how many Brits were presenting or attending and learning from all this? What were audience sizes like and who was in it? Perhaps I’d be pleasantly surprised and I’m very pleased to see that UK physio I’ve seen getting engaged with the community attending and I’m sure blown away.
 
Andy said:
IiME filmed the talks as usual and, after editing and processing, will be posting them on their website.
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Thanks Andy - do you mean they'll be posting a link to buy the DVD (rather than posting the video footage)?

Their usual thing is to allow discounted 'early bird' pre-orders but I haven't seen any of that. They don't usually wait for the DVDs to become available.
 
NelliePledge said:
possibly through the connection with OMF they could look at bringing along the UK people from Nottingham/Birmingham who will be working with the Harvard Group.
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I know I'm responding to a, relatively, old post. While the Harvard group on the Friday was, to my knowledge, solely represented by Ron Tompkins and Michael VanElzakker, I'm aware that the two exercise researchers from Nottingham attended the "early career researchers" event on the Tuesday. I have no information on Janet Lord from Birmingham (UK).

A note on Janet Lord, she would, at least to me from her profile, seem to be a very valuable person, for many reasons, to bring into the ME research field.

Professor Janet M Lord FMedSci, Director of the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing Director of the MRC-Arthritis Research UK Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/inflammation-ageing/lord-janet.aspx
 
Andy said:
Nope, the videos will be free to view on their website.
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Really?! That's a big step forward, and I'm really pleased to hear that IiME have taken it.

Looking forward to seeing the videos! I seem to remember that it's usually July by the time the DVDs arrive so hopefully not having to produce a physical object and mail it will speed things up a bit.
 
Grigor said:
Was there anything new or potentially groundbreaking that stood out? There was barely any live tweeting on the first day?
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I'll try to provide a summary of my thoughts in the next day or so but my initial reaction would be there was no stand-out announcement, the day was more about reports of progress being made from those established in the ME research field or introductory talks from those newer to the field. Other people may have a different view. :)
 
Andy said:
I'll try to provide a summary of my thoughts in the next day or so but my initial reaction would be there was no stand-out announcement, the day was more about reports of progress being made from those established in the ME research field or introductory talks from those newer to the field. Other people may have a different view. :)
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Thank you. That was my impression as well. Sadly!!
 
write up by Chris Armstrong
(from an email)
Reflections on the IiME Conference Week 2019
Written by Christopher Armstrong, PhD, OMF Science Liaison

This was possibly the largest ME/CFS meeting I had ever been to, which indicates how fast the research field is growing. There were 4 days of talks from before 9am until after 6pm every day and the talks were kept to around 20 minutes each.
It began on Tuesday the 28th of May with the young investigator conference coined “Thinking the Future”, an initiative started at the Invest in ME conference last year and elaborated upon at the NIH meeting just a couple of months ago. I was pleasantly surprised by the number of PhD students and the depth of their presentations. We discussed the paths to take for a future career in ME/CFS, the methods we could use to maintain momentum and how to keep the young investigators encouraged to move forward. Many young investigators commented that patient engagement was a strong source of positive experiences for them, so I would like to openly acknowledge and thank those patients that contact researchers the world over. The mutual benefits of researcher-patient interaction are truly remarkable.

The colloquium was spanned over two days, Wednesday and Thursday. Researchers from around the world presented their most recent findings. Each talk had a unique perspective and many were quite thought-provoking. The audience was very engaged, with very few empty seats and plenty of questions. Every session seemed to run overtime, which was a good indication of the amount of work there was to discuss. Each of the breaks and dinners were filled with excited chatter and possibilities. This colloquium has a particularly relaxed feel which provides a comfortable environment for collaboration building between scientists and clinicians.

The final day was primarily for the patients, the talks provided insight into the larger project being undertaken in the field and provided evidence that progress is happening all around.

Iime%202019%20montage%202.jpg

Left to right: Dr. Ron Davis; Linda Tannenbaum; Dr. Chris Armstrong & Linda;
Ron Davis, Maureen Hanson & Dr. Ronald Tompkins

The day began with a rallying cry from Dr Ian Gibson leading into two presentations from the major government research entities from the United States, the CDC and NIH, represented by Dr Elizabeth Unger and Vicky Whittemore respectively.

Over the day there were several talks by OMF Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) members, including Dr. Maureen Hanson discussing the “Immune Dysregulation in ME/CFS” and Dr. Øystein Fluge updating us on “Rituximab in ME/CFS: a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled trial”.

SAB Director and leader of the Collaborative Research Center at Stanford, Dr. Ron Davis, outlined an array of projects that are “Establishing new mechanistic and diagnostic paradigms for ME/CFS”. He began by detailing the main outcomes from the Severely ill Patients Study before launching into discussing the various diagnostic technology being developed and finally ending with the metabolic trap hypothesis.

SAB and co-leader of the Collaborative Research Activities at Harvard, Dr. Ron Tompkins, previewed the “Harvard Plans for Clinical Research into ME/CFS”. He highlighted the muscle biopsy study to characterize post-muscular stress in ME/CFS, this is in collaboration with Nottingham University (UK). Dr. Tompkins also gave an overview of the clinical work flow underway at Harvard, bringing several silos of research together to form a collaborative unit. One such researcher working within this collaboration is Dr. Michael VanElzakker, he discussed his brain imaging work.

During the breaks, many patients, carers and scientists surrounded the table that OMF had set up. They discussed their thoughts on the research being presented and wanted to know more about future directions. It was wonderful to interact with the broader community in an open way. Invest in ME once again delivered a tremendous platform for the sharing of research data and ideas. The researchers all felt very inspired and energized by these several days in London.

SAB%20participants.jpg
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