L – R: Centre for Blood Research Director Ed Conway, and Earl W. Davie, the namesake of the annual symposium.
For the sixth consecutive year, Vancouver played host in November to the world’s leading experts in hematology — and drew its largest crowd yet.
This year’s Earl W. Davie Symposium, organized by UBC’s Centre for Blood Research, featured two keynote speakers: Charles Esmon of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and David Ginsburg of the University of Michigan, both Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scientists.
The symposium, held Nov. 13 at the Four Seasons Hotel, was oversubscribed, drawing more than 200 individuals — primarily from UBC and its affiiliated hospitals and research institutes. The event was sponsored by Novo Nordisk, which has promised continued support.
Dr. Esmon, whose talk was titled, “Hype about histones in infections and inflammation,” uncovered the mechanisms controlling blood clotting and the links between clotting and inflammation. One of his key discoveries was the protein C anticoagulant pathway and how perturbations of this pathway can affect acute inflammatory response.
Dr. Ginsburg, whose talk was titled, “Infectious diseases, coagulation and fibrinolysis,” has identified several genes in the clotting pathway and characterized the causes of various inherited coagulation disorders.
The symposium honours the man who discovered the “waterfall sequence for blood clotting” — the biochemical steps in the blood that lead to clot formation. Dr. Davie, a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, went on to purify, characterize and clone almost all of the components of the coagulation and fibrinolytic system. One of the students who participated in that research was Ross MacGillivray, a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, founding Director of the Centre for Blood Research and former Vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine.
While his productivity and publication records are remarkable and enviable, the impact of his work is even greater, with virtually every medical and surgical discipline utilizing knowledge that he unearthed. The blood of every patient being admitted to hospital is tested using the information gained from his discovery, and all anticoagulation medication and monitoring rely on his discoveries.
Among those who attended was 1992 Nobel Laureate Edwin Fischer, of the University of Washington, who discovered that proteins could be phosphorylated, thereby able to transmit signals. Dr. Fischer has promised to attend next year, when he will deliver a lecture on the history and impact of his discovery.