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REPORT OF THE 96th ANNUAL MEETING OF   The General Registration of the meeting was the highest in the history of USCAP attendance. It was the largest meeting of physician-pathologists in the history of pathology, ever, anywhere, by anybody!! These attendance figures continue to make the annual meeting of the Academy the largest gathering, by far, of physician-pathologists in the world. Indeed, for the past five years we have regularly had 3100 or more in attendance. 684 (19.3%) of the registrants/attendees at the San Diego meeting were from international countries outside of the US and Canada. The countries (and the number of international visitors from each country) included: Mexico (66), Japan (60), Spain (53), Brazil (42), United Kingdom (42), France (36), Italy (35), South Korea (34) , Australia (34), Ireland (34), Netherlands (21), Germany (19), Argentina (18), Switzerland (16), Turkey (16), Taiwan (15), Greece (11), Austria (11), Belgium (9) , Czech Republic , Norway, Portugal , Chile, Columbia , Israel, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, European Union, Holland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Bosnia, and the West Indies. Thus, in toto, 684 international visitors from sixty-four countries outside of the USA and Canada were in attendance (19.3% of our total registrants). In actuality, approximately 5500 pathologists and colleagues/investigators throughout the world contributed to this historic Annual Meeting (see index of the Program Book for names). Of the 3534 registrants, 1903 were Regular/Sustaining members (54 %) and 1083 were Junior members/students (also an all-time record attendance). There were 326 pathologists in practice who were not members and 216 residents/fellows who were not members (yet). Thus including the Resident Monitors and other students, there were 1083 residents/fellows at our meeting (an all-time record; almost 10% more than last years all-time record). The percentage of house staff attending the meeting who are members of the Academy are for the past seven years - 41% , 69%, 67%, 66%, 76%, 84%, 81%, respectively. This probably relates to the effective recruitment we have had of pathology house staff/fellows/pathologists-in-training in the last 7 years. In July 1999 we had a total of 520 Junior Members; in the following seven years we recruited over 4200 additional Junior Members (many of which have now become Regular Members). Our present "steady state" of Junior Members is over 2400. Our total USCAP Membership is 10,500 physician-pathologists. Dr. Henry Appelman (University of Michigan) served a distinguished and quite active term as President of the USCAP. He turned over the gavel and the Presidency to Dr. Chris Crum (Harvard: Brigham & Women's) as the new President of the Academy. 2400 scientific abstracts were submitted for evaluation; an all-time record in submitted abstracts (all submitted electronically). The quality of the submitted abstracts remains very high. A record 1660 were accepted after "blind" peer review (70 % acceptance). The review is conducted by at least 4 individuals from the Academy (3 "experts" in the area and one from the Academy Education Committee). The percentage of acceptance is generally dependent upon the space available at the hotel (which is usually booked 5-6 years in advance of the meeting). abstracts were presented in the poster sessions (a record) and 280 as platform sessions. We try to accommodate as many quality poster sessions as space allows. Abstracts were submitted from throughout the world (from approximately 40 countries and about 350 academic medical centers and institutions). This was the sixth year for the USCAP to have electronic submission of our scientific abstracts (in conjunction with Marathon, Inc). These scientific abstracts are now online searchable by topic, disease, word, technique, author, institution, etc (www.uscap.org). The USCAP website: www.uscap.org consistently has the last three years of scientific abstracts (approximately 5000) which are now searchable by topic, disease, author, etc for the last 3 years. As noted before, 1083 pathologists-in-training and students attended the various portions of the meeting. 55% of ALL submitted scientific abstracts had a first author who is a pathologist-in-training (compared to 38%, 43% and 53% the last three years). (this does not count the house staff/fellows that are listed as second, third, etc authors). Over 400 Stowell-Orbison Abstracts were submitted. 230 were accepted for the Stowell-Orbison competition, and an additional two hundred were accepted as regular abstracts. Once again, the "scores" for the accepted Stowell-Orbisons were actually higher than the scores for the "regular" abstracts accepted for presentation (i.e, Non-Stowell-Orbison). There were four co-equal Stowell-Orbison Awards presented and four Certificates of Merit. The recipients, in alphabetical order of first authors name, of the Stowell-Orbison Awards are: Salah Alwaheeb Alpha-Actinin-4 Defficient Mice Develop Focal and Segmental Glomerulosclerosis with Features of Collapsing Glomerulopathy S Alwaheeb, JM Henderson, A Weins, SV Dandapani, MR Pollak, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA; Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard Institutes of Medicine, Boston, MA Sven Perner TMPRSS2-ERG Fusion Prostate Cancer: An Early Molecular Event Associated with Invasion S Perner, J-M Mosquera, F Demichelis, MD Hofer, PL Paris, J Simko, C Collins, TA Bismar, AM Chinnaiyan, AM De Marzo, MA Rubin, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany; Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA; University of California, San Francisco, CA; McGill University Faculty of Medicine, Montreal, QC, Canada; Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine & Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD; ITC-Irst, Povo (Trento), Italy; University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI Stephan Schulz Prevention of Acute Graft-Versus-Host Disease by Blocking T Cell Entry to Secondary Lymphoid Organs S Schulz, A Beilhack, J Baker, G Beilhack, R Nishimura, G Landan, E Baker, EI Herman, EC Butcher, CH Contag, RS Negrin, Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Technical University Munich, Munich, Bavaria, Germany Julie M. Wu Heterogeneity of Breast Cancer Metastases: A Rapid Autopsy Study Using Matched Primary-Metastases Tissue Microarrays JM Wu, M Halushka, D Molavi, J Fetting, NE Davidson, AM De Marzo, MJ Fackler, S Sukumar, P Argani , Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD Certificates of Merit Jessica B. Chan Prostate Stem Cell Antigen as an Adjunctive Marker for Transitional Cell Carcinoma in Urine Cytology Specimens JB Chan, B Shurtleff, R Reiter, JY Rao, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA Paul S. Furmanczyk Characterization of the Phosphatidylinositol 3-Kinase Pathway in Neurofibromatosis-1 Associated Tumors PS Furmanczyk, E Downs-Kelly, JR Goldblum, RB West, M van de Rijn, BP Rubin, University of Washington Medical Center, Seattle, WA; Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, OH; Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, CA O. Hans Iwenofu Phospho-S6 Ribosomal Protein: A Potential New Predictive Sarcoma Marker for Targeted mTOR Therapy OH Iwenofu, DG Goodwin, A Staddon, HM Haupt, JJ Brooks, Pennsylvania Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Philadelphia, PA; Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, PA Q. Liu Immunohistochemical Expression of Vitamin D Receptor Correlates with Decreased Immunohistochemical Activity of Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor-a in Steatohepatitis Q Liu, LK Campbell, M Tretiakova, C Gong, J Hart, The University of Chicago Hospitals, Chicago, IL USCAP/ADASP Autopsy Award G. L. DiSibio A Retrospective Correlation of Primary Cancers with Their Metastatic Sites at Autopsy GL diSibio, SW French , Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA USCAP/ADASP Surgical Pathology Award E. M. Manion Mandatory Second Opinion in Surgical Pathology Referral Material EM Manion, MB Cohen, JA Weydert , University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA 672 registrants attended the Long Course entitled "Targeted Therapies of Cancer: New Roles for Pathologists" directed by Drs. Marc Ladanyi (Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center) and Allen Gown (PhenoPath Labs) . Early perusals of the critique form show that this course was very well done and very well liked by the plus registrants. The syllabus was complete/"long" (200 pages in length) and this Long Course includes a CD packed full of several hundred images. This Long Course will be published in the next year in Modern Pathology.(Last year's Long Course on Diseases of the Liver and Pancreas is in the February 07 issue of Modern Pathology). Sixty half-day Short Courses were presented and set an all-time record of attendance (with a total registration of Short Courses taken being 4923 -that is the number of courses attended times the number of attendees at these sessions (this is 200 more than the previous record, held by our Chicago meeting in 2002); an overall average of about 82 pathologists/per Short Course offering). From 1999 to the present time, the Academy has had regularly over 4000 in total registration each year. Virtually all of our Short Courses have CD's (with 95% having post-conference CDs) and several have "Virtual Slides". Also what was amazing and wonderful was the fact that on Friday afternoon, last day of the meeting (I attended all the Friday PM Short Courses) over 500 people were still in attendance going to the Friday afternoon Short Courses! Two all-day Special Courses were offered: one on Introductory Molecular Pathology (headed by Drs. Julia Bridge (Univ. Nebraska), and Margie Scott (Univ. Arkansas) attracting 153 registrants on Thursday. For the third year in a row this course has a CD in addition to the extensive syllabus. The ongoing Advanced Molecular Pathology course (headed by Dr. Frederic Barr, Univ. of Pennsylvania) on Tuesday attracted 258 registrants and included a CD in addition to the extensive syllabus. Twenty - Four Companion Societies presented their educational endeavors on Saturday night and Sunday. The total registrations (number of attendees times the number of Companion Societies) was 2347, second highest in our history, after last years all-time record (2371). For the past five years all of the Companion Societies and evening Specialty Conferences' handouts/syllabus have been placed on our website. (www.uscap.org) after the Annual meeting. This year was our second year for the Companions and the Specialties to go "paperless". All of the Companion Society handouts were on our USCAP Website at least 2-3 weeks before the meeting, and the Specialty Sessions had their unknowns (i.e., Clinical history and unknown slides) up more than one month before the Annual meeting, with the answers (i.e., text, powerpoints, references, answers, etc) up the morning after that evening Specialty Conference. Two additional Companion's will be added next year: The American Society of Cytopathology (Sunday night) and the American Association of Neuropathologists (Saturday night); thus we will have 26 Companion Societies represented. The Nathan Kaufman Timely Topic Lecture was given by Dr. Steven L. Kunkel, Endowed Professor of Pathology, University of Michigan. The title of his lecture was " Inflammatory Keys to Chronic Diseases " (a very timely topic to be sure!). His lecture was elegant, timely, and very well received by the appreciative audience. He made us proud to be called "pathologist". (see www.uscap.org for biosketch). Dr. Virginia LiVolsi, Professor of Pathology, University of Pennsylvania presented the Maude Abbott Lecture. Her topic was "C Cell Lesions of the Thyroid: From Discovery to Molecular Biology." This elegant and wonderful lecture was also well attended. Her's was truly an outstanding presentation, an educational demonstration of superb organization and clarity. It was also a great historical review of this subject. (www.uscap.org) The Distinguished Pathologists Award was presented this year to an individual in recognition of distinguished service in the development of the discipline of pathology. Dr. Peter Burger, Professor of Pathology at Johns Hopkins, recognized by the Academy membership for his major and extensive contributions to pathology (especially neuropathology) over the years. Please see the USCAP Website (www.uscap.org) for his biosketch. The President's Award was presented this year to Jim Crimmins. His dedication and work is way "above and beyond the call of duty". He received a very lengthy and vibrant standing-ovation! (And deserved it!). Please see the USCAP Website of the 2006 Annual Meeting for details about this outstanding and dedicated individual who have contributed so much to pathology world-wide. (www.uscap.org) The F.K. Mostofi Distinguished Service Award went to Dr. Victor Reuter, Sloan-Kettering Memorial Hospital, for his numerous important past activities in the USCAP including being Chair of the USCAP Education Committee and the ad hoc Bylaws Committee, as well as multiple other significant contributions to the Academy. (www.uscap.org) The Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Award was presented to Dr. Arul M. Chinnaiyan , of the University of Michigan for his outstanding, cutting-edge work in the field of the molecular basis of prostatic carcinoma. (www.uscap.org) The recipient of the Castleman Award (for the best published paper in the field of human pathology ) was Dr. Adebowale Adeniran, presently of MD Anderson for his paper "Correlation between Genetic Alterations and Microscopic Features, Clinical Manifestations, and Prognostic Characteristics of Thyroid Papillary Carcinomas" in the American Journal of Surgical Pathology 30(2): 216-222, 2006. This work was done while he was at the University of Cincinnati and in conjunction with the University of Michigan. It must be noted that again the number of applications for this prestigious award were numerous, with many outstanding individuals having papers published in many outstanding journals. The F. Stephen Vogel Award (for the most outstanding paper published in an Academy journal by a pathologist-in-training ) went to Dr. Donna Hansel, presently of the Cleveland Clinic for her paper "Telomere length variation in biliary tract metaplasia, dysplasia and carcinoma" published in Modern Pathology (volume 19, pages 772-779, 2006). This work was done while she was at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. The 17 evening Specialty Conferences, which are organ-based, were held from 7:30-9:30 PM, which was a testimony to the continuing endurance of the meeting's registrants. All of the evening Specialty Conferences are online on the Academy's website. For the past five years the unknowns (i.e., clinical history and representative histologic images) are placed on our USCAP website several weeks before the annual meeting, and the answers, complete text, references, etc are placed on our website the next morning after the Specialty Conference for all throughout the world to enjoy. Additional activities of the Academy have concentrated on the partnership of our two academy journals with the most outstanding medical and science publishing group in the world--Nature Publishing Group. Many of the top scientific breakthroughs of the 20th Century were first reported in the journal - Nature (it is the world's foremost weekly scientific journal by impact factor). Nature Publishing Group (NPG) publishes over 30 high profile society-owned or affiliated journals and 7-8 of the top 20 in the world in impact factor. Both of our Academy's journals now offer 2 pages of free color per published article, rapid advance online publication available 6 weeks after manuscript acceptance, increased international exposure, electronic table of content alerts delivered directly to your inbox highlighting new content each month, online submission of manuscripts and tracking, and reference cross-linking via CrossRef and MEDLINE. Powered by Naturejobs, the Career and Recruitment division of the journal Nature, Pathologyjobs provides recruiters with unique vehicles to advertise. Their Nature website is outstanding with free abstracts of all articles, integrated searches, online archives of all full-text articles from 2000 available through a personal or institutional subscription, and author index-which searches authors names across all available articles. This is a very powerful force in research and education for our members to utilize. In addition, the scientific abstracts for the past three years are now online and searchable. (Please see our USCAP and the Nature websites). Other educational endeavors by the USCAP this past year include:
For the last three years, the Academy rolled out a number of new initiatives for our Junior members including: Several programs for pathologists-in-training were instituted-- including the Fellowship Fair with 54 institutions to discuss hundreds of fellowships; the new evening Specialty Conference just for house staff/fellows; and the House Staff Hospitality Room where Academy and Pathology leaders from throughout North America were present to talk with the house staff. The USCAP's annual summer pathology review course and update- Diagnostic Pathology , with its fourteen outstanding faculty will be held in Banff, Alberta, Canada from July 14-20, 2007. It is Directed by Drs. Greg Fuller and Stuart Schnitt. (See www.uscap.org for complete schedule). Last years course (06) came with a 1100 page handout and a 3800 image CD-ROM! This was the third year for the USCAP Winter (January) Course entitled "Diagnostic Cytopathology" under the initiation, leadership and direction of Dr. Celeste Powers (Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond). This 2 l/2 day weekend intense and advanced course was held at the Sheraton San Key Resort, Clearwater Beach, Florida. The 700 plus page handout and the extensive CD (with over a thousand images) were very well received. There were 80 individuals in attendance. We will be doing another winter Diagnostic Cytopathology course next year in January 2007 probably to be held in the Southwest (Arizona probably) The new educational initiative of the USCAP is Practical Pathology Seminars, in its second year, under the direction of Dr. John Goldblum. It will be held from May 3-6, 2007 in Cancun, Mexico at the JW Marriott Cancun Resort and Spa. Five short courses will be given on topics including: Cytology, GI, Head and Neck lesions, Skin (Melanoma), and Bone by an outstanding faculty of 12. Next year's annual USCAP meeting will be held in Denver, Colorado, March 1-7, 2008 . The Long Course entitled "Renal and Urothelial Tumors "will be directed by Drs. John Eble and David Grignon. As usual there will be an extensive handout/syllabus and a CD with a great many images. There are several additions to our USCAP Committees: Five new members of the Education Committee (under the Direction of Dr. Jeffrey Myers ) are: Drs. Ester Oliva (Mass General), Marie-Christine Aubry (Mayo), Jesse McKenney (Univ. Arkansas), Scott Kilpatrick (N.Carolina), and Mike Morgan (Univ. S. Florida/Tampa). Last year, by action of our Long Term Strategic Planning Initiatives under Dr. Jeffrey Myers, we added two Junior Members to the USCAP Education Committee: Drs. Sigrid Wayne ( Univ. Iowa) and Michael Bennett ( Brigham & Women's Hospital). They have now completed their two-year terms and we have chosen two new members: Drs. Michael Tetzlaff (University of Pennsylvania) and Matthew Wasco (University of Michigan). Dr. Richard Zarbo, Henry Ford Hospital is by vote of the membership the new Vice-President of the Academy, and Dr. Victor Reuter is President-Elect. The newly elected (by the Academy membership) Council members are: Drs. Jeffrey Myers (University of Michigan), Henry Tazelaar (Mayo, Scottsdale, Arizona), and Mary Bronner (Cleveland Clinic). Dr. Jack Strong (LSU) heads the Finance Committee and our newest members are Drs. Janice Lage (MUSC), and Jim Linder (Univ. Nebraksa). The Publications Committee is chaired by Dr. Allen Gown with Drs. Rick Fraser (McGill/Montreal) and Ron DeLellis (Brown/RI) as our newest members. The newest members of the Ramzi Cotran Young Investigator Committee are Drs. Jonathan Epstein (Johns Hopkins), and Peter Humphrey (Wash U). New Members of the Castleman Award Committee include: Drs. David Rimm (Yale), and Greg Lauwers (Mass Gen). New members of the Vogel Award Committee are Drs. Jennifer Hunt (Cleveland Clinic) and Gordon Yu (Univ. Penn). All of the members of the various USCAP Committees are noted on our website (www.uscap.org). The new at-large member of the Nominating Committee (under the Direction of Dr. Henry Appelman) is Dr. Ed Gabrielson. If you have nominations for Council (or any available committee position) please let the central Augusta office know (fsilva@uscap.org). Please check the USCAP Website (www.uscap.org) for an immense number of educational materials which are free. Over five year's worth of evening Specialty Conferences and Companion Society's materials are up as well over three dozen of excellent, ended Short Courses and available to anyone who wishes to utilize them. In addition, as noted before, three successive years of our scientific abstracts are now online and searchable, and can be downloaded, as well as many Short Courses. That's over 5000 searchable cutting-edge scientific abstracts! We also have a Table of Contents by 20 plus organ systems/subspecialties of our thousands of educational entries/modules for all to have for free. Our USCAP Website continues to have record-setting hits with over 5.0 million hits in January 2007 from almost 20,000 pathologists from throughout the world (85 countries) with over 500,000 total page views that month. (In March 07 the "hit" rate was over 9 million with over 22,000 pathologists involved and almost 600,000 page-downloads for that month alone)! The USCAP is happy to provide this free altruistic service for pathologists throughout the world. Go to: www.uscap.org for the largest eBook in the history of anatomic and diagnostic molecular pathology, for free! At present the USCAP membership is 10,500 pathologists; over 2400 of those are Junior Members. We continue to grow and be vibrant. We have added almost a thousand new members in the last 12 months alone. It is clear that our colleagues in pathology are a very dedicated and professional lot. We are proud to be associated with them. Please contact me at fsilva@uscap.org if you have any suggestions of how we can make our educational programs more relevant to your practice needs. Thanks for all your support for all those we serve--our patients, our physicians and our students. Hope to see you in Cancun, Banff, Phoenix/Scottdale, and Denver.
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