Organizer(s): Beatrice H. Hahn, Wesley I. Sundquist, Michael H. Malim and Didier Trono
April 12 - 18, 2004
Whistler Conference Centre (meeting only)  ·  Whistler, British Columbia
Abstract Deadline: December 11, 2003
Early Registration Deadline: February 12, 2004

Supported by Keystone Symposia

The University of Colorado School of Medicine is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The University of Colorado School of Medicine designates this educational activity for a maximum of 28-35 category 1 credits toward the AMA Physician's Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those credits that he/she actually spent in the activity.

To receive CME credits, mark the box on the registration form, and pay the additional $50.00.

Joint meeting: HIV Vaccine Development: Progress and Prospects (X8)
NOTE: Registration for meeting allows attendance at joint meeting (pending space availability).

• Discuss emerging concepts in the molecular mechanisms of HIV pathogenesis.
• Review the definition of a variety of envelope/receptor interactions, the development of tools for depleting cellular proteins and visualizing viral trafficking in real time, the discovery of cellular factors and genetic elements that restrict viral replication, an increased understanding of the activities of pathogenesis factors such as nef, the identification of host factors required for viral replication, assembly and budding, the development of non-pathogenic primate lentiviral models, and an increased understanding of the origins and evolution of HIV and primate lentiviruses.
• Examine how the virus penetrates its target cells, once the envelope binds its receptors and undergoes an increasingly well characterized number of structural modifications.
• Identify the site and mechanism of uncoating, the step through which the inner components of viral cores lose their external layer, the capsid, and organize into an enzymatically active nucleoprotein complex.
• Discuss how the virus escapes what increasingly appears to be a formidable attempt of the cell to repel this genetic invader.
• Review how the viral genome finds its way to regions of the chromosome in which it is almost always successfully expressed.
• Discuss how the combination of host and viral factors modulate viral transcription and cell division, seemingly adapting it to the extracellular environment, and in some rare but critical cells resulting in latent, reactivatable gene expression.
• Identify how the virus hijacks intracellular machineries organize the formation of new particles and promote their release from the infected cell.
• Define what cells host the long-term reservoir of HIV that seems to preclude viral eradication in patients treated with highly active chemotherapy.
• Discuss how these cells avoid elimination by the immune system.
• Discuss why naturally occurring SIV infections are not causing disease in their natural hosts.
• Examine how we can best utilize these SIVs as tools to probe the pathogenic mechanisms of HIV.