The abstract deadline for the 2010 Cold Spring Harbor Asia meeting on Molecular Switches and Genome Function in Stem Cells & Development, September 21-25, 2010 taking place at Cold Spring Harbor Asia in Suzhou, China is quickly approaching on July 2nd.

This is the first stem cell-themed meeting organized by CSH Asia. For the past years, we have witnessed a rapid development of research in this field within Eastern Asia countries or regions particularly in Japan and China. This conference will try to hunnish the strong intellectual energy by surveying a wide range of topics including embryo-derived stem cells, induced pluripotency, tissue-specific stem/progenitor cells, molecular and functional characterization of stem cell niche, extrinsic factors and genetic activity controlling stem cell differentiation, system biological analysis of pluripotency and stemness, transdifferentiation of somatic cell types. Future directions, social impact, challenges as well as broader collaborations would be explored.

Organizers:
Duanqing Pei, CAS Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, China
Shin-ichi Nishikawa, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, Japan
Patrick Tam, Children's Medical Research Institute, Australia

Keynote Speakers:
Andras Nagy, Samuel Lunenfeld Research Inst., Mt. Sinai Hospital, Canada

Invited speakers:
Nick Barker, Hubrecht Institute, The Netherlands
Robert Blelloch, UCSF, Institute for Regeneration Medicine, USA
Ian Chambers, University of Edinburgh, UK
Hongkui Deng, Peking University, College of Life Sciences, China
Venugopala Gonehal, University of California, USA
Jacob Hanna, Whitehead Institute, USA
Richard Harvey, The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, Australia
Ihor Lemischka, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, USA
Melissa Little, University of Queensland, Australia
Pentao Liu, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, UK
Emi Nishimura, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Japan
Hitoshi Niwa, RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology, Japan
Guangjin Pan, University of Wisconsin, USA
Mitinori Saitou, Kyoto University, Japan
Timm Schroeder, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany
Michael Shen, Columbia University Medical Center, USA
Yun-Bo Shi, NICHD, NIH, USA
Toshio Suda, Keio University, Japan
Emma Whitelaw, University of Queensland, Australia
Rongwen Xi, National Institute of Biological Sciences, China
Ting Xie, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, USA
Guo-Liang Xu, Shanghai Institutes for Biology Sciences, China
George Yeoh, University of Western Australia, Australia
Rui Zhao, Children's Hospital Boston, USA
Thomas Zwaka, Baylor College of Medicine, USA

Abstract submission:

The majority of the talks will be given by invited speakers but some talks will be chosen from openly submitted abstracts. Abstracts should contain only new and unpublished material and must be submitted electronically by the abstract deadline. Selection of material for oral and poster presentation will be made by the organizers. Status (fellow's talk/poster) of abstracts will be posted on our website as soon as decisions have been made by the organizers.

Abstract deadline July 2nd.

Stipends:

We are eager to have as many young people as possible attend since they are likely to benefit most from this meeting. We have some funds to partially support graduate students and post docs. For detailed information. please visit our webpage. Stipends will be only available for participants with abstracts.

On behalf of the Organizers: Duanqing Pei, Shin-ichi Nishikawa and Patrick Tam

Meetings & Courses Program
Cold Spring Harbor Asia
http://www.csh-asia.org