Successfull 15th International Tumor Necrosis Factor Conference

TNF is the target of etanercept and Dr. Edward Tobinicks methods. So if Dr. Tobinick is right there should have been some presentation here on use of etanercept for stroke. Dr. Tobinick is not one of the speakers or committee members. If fixing TNF really helps stroke survivors someone at this conference would know. A great stroke association would find out the answer. But we have jackshit instead and no one will do the work to find out the answer. Because we have NO f*cking strategy on how to solve any of the problems in stroke.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=153778&CultureCode=en
On May 20-23, 2015 the “15th International TNF Conference” was organized with great enthusiasm at the Handelsbeurs venue by Prof. Dr. Peter Vandenabeele (Inflammation Research Center, VIB and Ghent University) and Prof. Henning Walczak (UCL Cancer Institute London). More than 230 persons from over 25 countries actively vividly participated in the presentations and discussions. The congress consisted of 53 talks by internationally selected speakers and two highly attended poster sessions with 100 communications.
Among the speakers renowned persons like Prof. Dr. David Baltimore (Californian Institute of Technology, in 1975 one of the youngest Nobel prize winners ever and discoverer of the reverse transcriptase),  Prof. Dr. Shigekazu Nagata (Osaka University, president of the Japanese Biochemical Society, who discovered several fundamental biochemical mechanisms of apoptosis and phagocytosis of apoptotic cells) and Dr. Vishva Dixit (Vice-president Genentech, San Francisco, world expert in molecular mechanisms of inflammation) were present during the whole meeting.

The conference started with a tribute and thanksgiving to Prof. Em. Dr. Walter Fiers from Ghent University by short speeches nicely decorated with pieces of Mozart, Schubert and Verdi performed by the Morandi Quartet. Prof. Em. Dr. Walter Fiers performed leading research on the domain of cloning and recombinant expression of cytokines among which Tumor Necrosis Factor (TNF), a protein that is produced in our body during infection, cancer and cellular stress. TNF also plays a crucial role during inflammatory diseases and is therefore therapeutically blocked by administration of neutralizing antibodies during Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and heavy cases of psoriasis.
One of the important subjects of the conference were the insights in the molecular mechanisms how TNF and TNF family members elicit a wide diversity of cellular processes such cell survival, inflammation, differentiation and cell death (apoptosis or necroptosis), and these various “decisions” are taken. The last years the research on the identification of these molecular decision points has revealed that the activity of RIP kinases is crucial in these. Several pharmaceutical companies are now running discovery programs to develop new drugs that block these important class of kinases.
The conference was closed by a nocturne in the Museum of Fine Arts where in a speech on the restauration of the Ghent Altarpiece science and arts were marvelously unified. The scientific quality, the venue location, the fairy-like atmosphere of the historical center of Ghent, and last but not least, the organizational skills of Veronique Vandevoorde before and during the meeting were highly appreciated.
http://www.tnf2015.org/