ACVP/ASCVP 2012 Annual Meeting Focused Scientific Sessions

The Focused Scientific Sessions of the combined 63nd Annual Meeting of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists (ACVP) and 47th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Veterinary Clinical Pathology (ASVCP) begin on Sunday, December, 2, 2012. Sessions include Clinical Pathology, Diagnostic Pathology, Education, Experimental Disease, Natural Disease, and Industrial and Toxicologic Pathology. To fill these sessions, we received 272 abstract submissions of original work from institutions all over the world.

For the first time, the meeting abstracts will be published on the ACVP website as the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting. Abstracts will be posted in an “open access” location on the website and will also be available throughout the meeting via a mobile meeting app. Publication on the website allowed a new “search” function to be developed for the proceedings, which provides the ability to search by any word in the title or body of any abstract. Additionally, the 2012 proceedings will be the first installation in the creation of a permanent searchable archive of annual meeting proceedings. Moving the abstracts to the ACVP website will bring Veterinary Pathology to the world in a new way that increases the visibility of ACVP and ASVCP while also providing an enhanced Veterinary Pathology resource to serve people around the globe.

The Focused Scientific Session Committees have been hard at work organizing programs to showcase the innovative and investigative work of our college members and to bring ground-breaking science and technology from outside resources to the attention of our membership. Highlights from the various sessions include the following:

Clinical Pathology: It is all about the blood for the clinical pathologists this year, with invited talks on infections of dog and cat blood cells and hemoplasmas and host coexistence.

Diagnostic Pathology: Don’t miss 2 afternoons packed with 25 interesting case reports, including the presentation on glioblastoma multiforme in raccoons on Sunday at 3:00 pm by the 2012 AAVLD/ACVP award winner, Dr Federico Giannitti.

Education: Bringing veterinary pathology education into the modern world, this group opens their session with talks on the utilization of smart phones in the classroom and follows through with invited lectures on the role of experience in medical expertise and methods for learning assessment.

Experimental Disease: With an emphasis toward our immune system, invited speakers cover a range of topics, including cytokine production by innate lymphocytes in cattle, immune responses to equine herpesvirus-1, inflammatory stress and drug-induced liver injury, and the importance of adjuvant selection in developing new vaccines.

Natural Disease: For a broad spectrum dose of natural diseases, this group brings us invited speakers on equine herpesvirus-1virulence factors, persistent bovine anaplasmosis, dermatopathology, and the feline auditory system.

Industrial and Toxicological Pathology: Keeping drugs safe, our industry group is supplying talks on aerosolized therapeutics, developmental neurotoxicity, adverse events affecting the female reproductive system, and endocrine disruption research.

Don’t let these great sessions distract you from also visiting the poster presentations of original research. Posters will be on display throughout the meeting. However, we will have a Focused Poster Session on Saturday evening during the opening reception. This is the one and only time that we have asked presenters to be available at their posters. This forum for exchange is always a smash hit because it is a dedicated time to meet the folks behind our science and to talk pathology with colleagues.

It has been a great year for the Focused Scientific Sessions Committees thanks to the highest number of abstracts ever submitted for the meeting. There is a little something for everyone in the diverse and enlightening program. I am looking forward to what looks to be a terrific meeting, and I expect to see all of you there.

Kelli Boyd 2012 ACVP Meeting Focused Scientific Session Chair and Abstract Editor, Department of Pathology Microbiology and Immunology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee