News and Reports
The American Academy of Microbiology has released its newest colloquium report, “The Fungal Kingdom: Diverse and Essential Roles in Earth’s Ecosystem.”
Sichuan dermatologists’ action on 5.12 Wenchuan earthquake rebuild
The program for the ISHAM congress in Tokyo 2009, http://www.congre.co.jp/isham2009/ , is taking shape. A wide array of presentations is scheduled, with many parallel sessions. Among the keynote lectures will be the following:
Kyung J. Kwon-Chung: Intrinsic heteroresistance of Cryptococcus neoformans to azoles: A survival mechanism of the fungus under stress.
David Ellis: Dancing with Fungus.
Neil Gow: The Candida cell wall: biosynthesis, immune recognition and adaptation to stress.
Kieren A. Marr: Immunologic risks for fungal infections: Translating knowledge into targeted prevention strategies.
Yoichiro Iwakura: The roles of Dectin-1 and Dectin-2 in the host defense against fungal infection.
We welcome the affiliation of the Turkish Microbiological Society to ISHAM. More news on this society will be posted on the ISHAM website soon
We are happy to welcome the Austrian Society for Medical Mycology as an ISHAM-affiliated society. This is an active, long-established society with 110 members. You may like to visit their website at http://www.oegmm.at/ .
The British Society for Medical Mycology has set up a distance learning-based course in the theory and practice of medical mycology, by means of DVDs, web-based materials and practical courses. The course is flexible and taught in a modular format, allowing the student to take between three and five years until graduation. Click here for further information
A new journal is launched by the British Medical Journal: “BMJ Case Reports”, see http://casereports.bmj.com/about-bmj-cases . This journal aims to publish a high volume of cases in all disciplines so that healthcare professionals, researchers and others can easily find clinically important information on common and rare conditions. A further initiative concerning case reports, focusing on clinical education, is Fungal Infections Virtual Grand Rounds; click http://hstelearning.mit.edu/fi/index.html .
At the Jena School for Microbial Communication (JSMC) in Jena, Germany, a PhD position is available on the theme “Host pathogen interactions of human pathogenic yeast”. Click here for further information, or contact Prof. Dr. B. Hube, +49-3641-532-1401, bernhard.hube@hki-jena.de .
ISHAM has the “Carolyn Halden Fund” for modest sponsoring of those who are unable to pay the costs of membership to our society, see Click here for further information . If you know anyone who might like to become a member but need this support, please advice the candidate to contact the General Secretary.
Next year we expect to see you all at the ISHAM congress in Tokyo. For those of you who think this is too expensive, take a look here! We give you some examples how you can keep costs within reasonable limits. The congress is really cheap for early birds, ISHAM members and good calculators!
Information on the congress can be found here . New data on accommodation is given here . The detailed scientific will be provided soon. We already announce a meeting specially scheduled for ISHAM-affiliated societies (listed here ). Coordinators of societies are requested to attend this meeting, where we will discuss opportunities to internationalize your activities. The ISHAM Working Groups (listed here ) will take a prominent place at the ISHAM congress. Please also take a look at the satellite symposium in Beijing (here ).
Mark your calendars and plan to attend the Forty-third Annual Meeting of the Medical Mycological Society of the Americas in Boston, MA on June 2, 2008 at the Parris Restaurant, Faneuil Hall, 250 Quincy Market Building ((617) 248-9900) at 5:30PM. Please refer to the MMSA website for more details.
ISHAM announces with great sadness that one of our founding members, Prof. Gabriel Segretain, has passed away at the age of 95. An obituary can be found at the ISHAM website
A new quarterly review journal in medical mycology has been started: the Journal of Invasive Fungal Infections, with John Perfect as editor-in-chief. For full information and online access, click http://www.invasivefungalinfections.com/default.aspx .
Entering its second year of publication, Current Fungal Infection Reports is one of the Current Reports journals that were originally developed to enable specialists to keep up to date with the expanding volume of information in their field. Themes covered so far include epidemiology, genomics and pathogenesis, pharmacology of new antifungal agents, therapy, diagnosis and much more. Each issue contains a web alert. The editorial team is headed up by Andreas Groll and Carol Kauffman. The journal is published quarterly by the Current Medicine group and is published both in paper and electronic formats. Click here for further information.
Report, fungal sinusitis workshop
The working group on ‘Fungal Sinusitis’ organized a Workshop during 9 - 11 February 2008 at Chandigarh, India.
Report Medical Mycology West China
During the last week of March, 2008, a highly successful Medical Mycology course was presented in Chengdu City, Sichuan province in West China.
A symposium report of the 34th Annual Meeting of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation, held in Florence, Italy, 30 March – 2 April 2008, can be found on the ISHAM website at http://www.isham.org/pdf/EBMT2008-IFIreport-Final.pdf
A new tool for fast and reliable identification of dermatophytes, using validated barcodes based on ITS sequences, has been made freely available at the CBS website: click http://www.cbs.knaw.nl/dermatophytes/defaultpage.aspx . The database uses taxonomy and materials provided by Y. Gräser, Berlin.
A new Working Group has joined ISHAM: ‘Fungiscope’, aiming at global registration of rare fungal infections. The group plans to interact with other ISHAM WGs with expertise on particular groups of uncommon fungi. Clinicians are invited to deposit their data; this will be sponsored. Information on the initiative can be found at http://www.fungiscope.net/index.html .
The American Society for Microbiology is seeking highly qualified individuals to work as consultants for capacity building of international HIV/AIDS microbiology laboratories in resource-poor, French-speaking countries, Click here for further information.
Routine identifications of uncommon pathogens using GenBank often gives erroneous results, because the quality of depositions may be poor. A large consortium of mycologists wrote a letter to Science, advocating more inter-active correction process of deposited data; see http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/319/5870/1598.pdf .
A new book on Aspergillus genomics has recently been published, edited by S.A. Osmani and G.H. Goldman, entitled “The Aspergilli: Genomics, Medical Aspects, Biotechnology, and Research Methods”. For information, see ISHAM website .http://www.isham.org/books.html
A new area has been added to the ISHAM website: “Protocols in Diagnostic and Clinical Mycology”. A first set of molecular protocols is now freely available at http://www.isham.org/Protocol.
A report of a meeting of the ISHAM Working Group “Genotyping of Cryptococcus”, held at the TIMM congress in Torino, Italy, October 2007, is now available in the WG area of the ISHAM website; please click here.
The Chinese National Symposium for Medical Mycology was held in the beautiful seacoast resort city of Qingdao, Oct. 11-13, 2007.
Click to see the report.
The Fungal Pathogenesis Forum: a new bulletin-based discussion web site.
Click here for further information
Meeting Report: 2nd PAMMS Conference
Cape Town, May 6-8, 2007
Click here for the report
Meeting Report: EBMT
Lyon, March 24-28, 2007
Click here for the report
Meeting Report: ECCMID
Munich, March 31-April 3, 2007
Click here for the report
Medical Mycology Course in West China: 29 March to 2nd April 2007
Click here for a report
British Society for Medical Mycology/University College London Diploma/MSc in Medical Mycology
Applications from overseas student now welcomed.
Click here for further information
