Summer 2022 digest

Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,

In the northern hemisphere, the summer break is currently the occasion to enjoy a couple (or more) weeks without cumbersome tasks. I just want to remind you that there is a late-breaking abstract session for Montreal ISAD 2022 (link) concerning information that was not yet known or fully available by the abstract submission deadline. The deadline for late-breaking abstract submission is July 31st, 2022, to allow publication in the Journal Acta DV with the program and the other abstracts. A few travel grants will be allocated for the late breaking accepted abstracts.

Agenda of the next annual meetings

The executive ISAD board has been working actively to prepare the agenda of the next annual meetings, and as already announced, ISAD will return to Europe next year, in Gdansk, Poland, with Magda Trzeciak chairing the 2023 local organizing committee; the date will be officially announced soon, as well as the motto. Following the recent history of this famous Baltic port, solidarity is being envisaged as a keyword, with accessibility to medicines in AD as one of the main issues, following our recent discussions with WHO in Madagascar.

For 2024 and 2025, ISAD will be welcomed in regions of the world where our Society has never travelled. In 2024 we will go to the Middle East in Doha (Qatar) under the leadership of Martin Steinhoff with itch at the center of the stage. Of note, the recent discovery of a novel sensor for mechanical itch untangles the complexity of itch sensation, and the Nobel winning senior author of the June Nature paper, Ardem Patapoutian suggests clinical applications in AD. Our field is again balancing between immunology and neurosciences.

In 2025, the meeting will move to the Pacific, in Melbourne, Australia. We want to celebrate the centennial of the birth of the founder of AD meetings, Georg Rajka (1925-2013). Georg wrote his PhD Thesis on AD in 1963 and reviewing the last 60 years of AD science will be very challenging! Many thanks to John Su who has accepted to host the meeting.