Mark your calendar!

Building on the success of previous meetings, the Conference will feature workshops, debates, poster sessions and breakout symposia including topics such as immunology, immunotherapy, imaging, pathology as well as surgical pitfalls and challenges.

The Conference will provide the ideal forum to stimulate ideas and establish collaborations as well as to initiate intense discussions about surgery, pathology, new treatments, relevance of biological data and animal models. Poster viewing opportunities and interactive sessions will foster communications between delegates. Another scientific emphasis will be molecular biology and the sequencing of the mesothelioma genome.

The PDF file contains all the abstracts presented in Kyoto (114 pages).

You can search for specific topics by using the search function in your Acrobat Reader or by using CTRL+F (CMD+F on a Mac) in your web browser.

Eva Ramqvist (Stockholm, Sweden)
Microenvironment-dependent mesenchymal-to epithelial transition in a xenograft model of malignant mesothelioma.

Filip Mundt (Sweden)
A battery of biomarkers from effusions improve sensitivity for the diagnosis of malignant mesothelioma.

Tomasz Grodzki (Poland)
Replacement of the diaphragm by the latissimus dorsi muscle flap during mesothelioma resection.

Michael Peake (U.K.)
Mesothelioma incidence and survival in UK cancer networks and regions.

Maria McIntire (Boston, USA)
The accuracy of pretreatment biopsy of pleural malignant mesothelioma in predicting histopathologic type in the extrapleural pneumonectomy specimen.

William Richards (Boston, USA)
Computed tomographic assessment of apical involvement in clinical evaluation of malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Masaki Anraku (Toronto, Canada)
Long-term outcome after extra-pleural pneumonectomy for patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma: A 10-year single center experience.

Hironori Katayama (Tokyo, Japan)
Expression and localization of matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) in mesothelioma cells and reactive mesothelial cells.

Noriko Inagaki (Osaka, Japan)
Primary intra-hepatic malignant mesothelioma accompanying with multiple lymphadenopathies due to acid-fast bacilli: A case report.

Tetsuya Mizuno (Nagoya, Japan)
YAP induces malignant mesothelioma cell proliferation via induction of CCDN1 expression.

Dr. Matyas Bendek
Dept of Pathology, Tatabanya, Hungary
Post-irradiation pericardial malignant mesothelioma: report of an autopsy case and review of the literature.

Dr. Amanda Cleaver
University of Western Australia, Australia
Integrating immunotherapies with debulking surgery to target residual and metastatic mesothelioma.

Dr Johan Coolen
University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium
Functional MR tools for diagnosing malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Dr. Assunta De Rienzo
Brigham and Women’s Hospital, US
The expression of DPP10, a Novel Chimera Gene Identified by Second Generation Sequencing of Tumor Genome, is associated with outcome in Mesothelioma

Dr. Steven Gray
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
RON/MST1R, a receptor tyrosine kinase expressed in malignant pleural mesothelioma.

Dr. Kevin Hollevoet
Ghent University Hospital, Belgium
Longitudinal Stability and Screening Value of Mesothelioma Biomarkers in an Asbestos-Exposed Population.

Dr. Tamara Tilleman
Brigham and Womens Hospital, US
Predictors of Resectability in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma: Additive Effects of Volumetric Analysis and Preoperative Pathophysiological Variables. 5 year follow up and an update to IMIG 2008 report.

Dr. Licun Wu
Toronto General Hospital, Canada
Tumor Cell Repopulation Is Inhibited by Regulatory T Cell Depletion between Cycles of Chemotherapy in a Murine Mesothelioma Model

One young investigator award is given in honor of ADAO, the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization http://www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org/. ADAO is an independent nonprofit organization working for awareness, advocacy, and prevention of asbestos diseases and the support and cure of victims.  A monetary prize was donated to support this award by Steven Kazan of Kazan, McClain, Lyons, Greenwood & Harley of Oakland, CA USA.
The prize was presented by Linda Reinstein, CEO and Co-Founder of the ADAO.
The award was presented to Spoponki Kgalamono from The National Institute for Occupational Health in Johannesburg South Africa for her work describing the rates of pleural mesothelioma in South Africa from 1995-2006. In this work, she and her colleagues showed that the age standardized mortality rate was 11-15 per million in men and 3-5 million per year in women, lower than expected probably because of under-ascertainment and also because of shortened lifespan due to HIV/AIDS.

THE IBAS AWARD

One young investigator award is given in honor of IBAS, the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat, http://ibasecretariat.org/ This organization was established in 2000 to achieve a global asbestos ban and to alleviate the damage caused by widespread asbestos use.
A monetary prize was donated to support this award by Steven Kazan of Kazan, McClain, Lyons, Greenwood & Harley of Oakland, CA USA.
The IBAS award was presented to Isabelle Opitz of the Division of Thoracic Surgery, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland for a poster presentation on the role of ERCC1, the excision repair cross-complementation group 1 protein. Despite the expectation that the expression of this protein predicts response to platinum based chemotherapy, Dr. Opitz found that the expression of ERCC1 failed to correlate with either response to chemotherapy or survival for mesothelioma patients.

THE BANJAN AWARD

One young investigator award is given in honor of BANJAN, the Ban Asbestos Network Japan. This organization, composed of trade unions, citizens groups and individuals, is dedicated to raising awareness about the hazards of asbestos and supporting victims.
A monetary prize was donated to support this award by Steven Kazan of Kazan, McClain, Lyons, Greenwood & Harley of Oakland, CA USA.
The prize was awarded to Ryoji Eguchi of the Department of Thoracic Oncology, Hyogo College of Medicine, Hyogo, Japan for his work on the mechanism by which arsenic trioxide, a clinical treatment for certain leukemias, induces apoptosis in mesothelioma cells.

Hedy Lee Kindler, MD

As the President of iMig, I am delighted to welcome you to the redesigned and updated iMig website.

As the leading international organization for physicians and scientists dedicated to mesothelioma research, iMig is proud to unveil this website as part of its mission to communicate with its members across the globe.   Although an iMig website has existed for the past 10 years, thanks to the generosity of our donors, we now have the resources to invest in improving its features, timeliness and interaction with our members.  Many thanks go to Courtney Broaddus and Dario Barbone for their hard work and dedication in creating this new site.

Please explore our new website and learn about its features from Dr. Barbone (see his commentary on this page). Join us as members by using the button on the home page and tell us about your key interests. Contribute ideas and content that we may select for publication on this site.

Lastly, don’t forget the iMig biennial meeting in Kyoto Aug. 31- Sept. 3. As with our past meetings, we envision that this high-profile, trans-disciplinary, international 10th iMig meeting will present scientific information of the highest caliber, foster international collaboration, inspire new investigators, generate new ideas, and establish benchmark standards in this disease.  Please visit the iMig 2010 Kyoto meeting website to register.

Hedy Lee Kindler, MD