American Society of Gene Therapy--First Annual Meeting. Education session: the ABCs of non-viral vectors for gene therapy. 28-31 May 1998, Seattle, Washington, USA.
In July 1996, the American Society of Gene Therapy (ASGT) was established in San Francisco by George Stamatoyannopoulos (President of ASGT, Professor of Genetics and Medical Genetics at the University of Washington, USA), James M Wilson (President Elect of ASGT, Director of the Institute for Human Gene Therapy, University of Pennsylvania, USA) and other gene therapy experts. In May 1998, this society held its first annual meeting, in Seattle, WA. The aim of the annual meeting is to provide a forum for all investigators, including students, young scientists, academic researchers and those working in industry. To avoid the risk of bias through election of one program committee, symposia, workshops and poster sessions are organized by different committees. There are nine committees in total, so each discipline within the diverse field of gene therapy is properly represented. An education program was organized by Savio LC Woo (Mount Sinai of Medicine, New York, USA) and there was a high school student symposium to encourage interest from the younger generation. Professor Stamatoyannopoulos said that he would like to see the NIH establishing centers of excellence of gene therapy, as they did for cancer 25 years ago. James Wilson then thanked George for all his work founding the society, as he took over as president. There are already 14,000 members of the ASGT and more than 1500 scientists attended this conference. There were 18 sessions of oral presentations and 750 abstracts.
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