Aegean Conferences is an independent, nonprofit, educational
organization directed and managed by the scientific community. The board
is made up of nine researchers/scientists in various disciplines from
Harvard, Brown, University of Pennsylvania, UCSD, Princeton, Biovista
and the Foundation for Biomedical Research Academy of Athens. The board
both invites and approves unsolicited proposals for Conferences in all
fields of Science, Engineering, Arts, and Humanities. The purpose of the
Conferences is to bring together individuals with common interests to
examine the emerging and most advanced aspects of their particular
field.
Complement has long been regarded as a pivotal effector arm of the
innate immune response, eliciting important immunoregulatory functions
in the context of inflammation and also serving as a vital link between
the innate and adaptive immune response. In the post-genomic era, our
knowledge of the innate immune system is enriched by findings that point
to novel functions that do not strictly correlate with immunological
defense and surveillance, immune modulation or Inflammation. Several
studies indicate that complement proteins exert functions that are
either more complex than previously thought, or go well beyond the
innate immune character of the system. The advent of high-throughput
platforms for genome and proteome-wide profiling, together with the
enormous amount of raw genetic information that has accumulated in the
databases, have stirred new expectations in biomedical research. They
have led complementologists to revisit established biological systems,
such as the complement system, from a global and integrative
perspective. Complement research is now faced with the challenge of
trying to integrate isolated biochemical pathways into complex gene and
protein regulatory circuits.
In this respect, scientists from around the world will convene at the
Fourth Aegean Conferences Workshop on Complement Associated Diseases,
Animal Models, and Therapeutics (June 10-15, 2007), to discuss recent
advances in this fast evolving field. This volume represents a
collection of topics on the "novel" functions of complement,
patho-physiology, protein structures, design of complement inhibitors,
and complement assays discussed during the conference.
