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Welcome to the 97th annual meeting of the USCAP. The past year has been an exciting one, witnessing
an evolution in the way the Academy serves the membership.
The USCAP reaches pathologists at every level of practice and training. It has over 10,600 members,
and the number of members continues to rise every year, thanks to both an increase in senior membership
and an active Ambassador's Program that Fred Silva initiated several years ago and which increases our
junior membership. The USCAP annual meeting is the largest meeting of physician pathologists anywhere in
the world and welcomes attendees from not only North America but throughout the world, making it a truly
international meeting. In addition to the annual meeting, the USCAP sponsors three successful multi-day
courses during the year, the 6-day Diagnostic Pathology, the 3-day Diagnostic Cytopathology, and the
3-day Practical Pathology Seminars in which highly successful short courses from prior meetings are made
available in a weekend format. It sponsors two successful journals, Modern
Pathology and Laboratory Investigation.
The USCAP continues to evolve and both new and old members will be impressed by the extent of
offerings on the USCAP website (www.USCAP.org). The USCAP "Knowledge Hub/Pathology Portal" is the
largest "eBook" in the history of pathology, encompassing anatomic and molecular pathology, and includes
links to 1900 Educational Modules with thousands of pages of educational text and thousands of images of
diseases of every imaginable kind including all the educational materials from the past six annual
meetings. Thanks in a large part to the tireless efforts of David Hardwick, and the contributions of
thousands of USCAP faculty, this peer-reviewed resource is now available to everyone. Visitors can
search by topic, disease, author, and technology and update their knowledge base with the assistance of
leaders in the field. It links with pathologists in underdeveloped countries to bring educational
advances to them. Remarkably, all of this is organized by a professional staff of only seven people in
the USCAP office in Georgia. In addition to our Executive Vice President, Fred Silva, this group
includes Jo Ann Johnson, Kerry Crockett, Linda Haygood, Carolyn Lane, Sally Miglionico and Brenden
Taylor. How can so much be accomplished by so few? The answer is that the tiny professional staff has a
lot of help. The USCAP depends on its huge cadre of volunteers who serve on the Executive Committee, the
Council and Education Committee and who present the courses at all the venues, who review and grade the
submitted abstracts, who edit the journals and review their manuscripts, who set publication policy and
who oversee the finances. The marriage of professional staff and dedicated volunteers is what makes our
Academy so successful.
Two additional ground-breaking advances in the academy website offerings that are or will be available
in the near future are the "Virtual Slide Box" and The "eAcademy". The Virtual Slide Box is available
for free and consists of hundreds of glass slide images scanned from cases presented at the meetings,
indexed by organ site and available to website
visitors available as either unknowns or by listing of diagnoses. This new resource distills the
learning experience to the level of a virtual tutorial in histopathologic diagnosis. Over 300 virtual
slides are currently available and are expected to expand to many times this number. The eAcademy will
provide ACCME and ABP-approved CME and Self-Assessment Modules online. The Editor-in-Chief of this new
venture, Dr. John Sinard of Yale University, is joined by a newly appointed editorial board. These
modules, which are peer-reviewed by the experts, will provide the practitioner with an inexpensive way to
update their knowledge and CME credits via the world wide web.
The Annual Meeting has always been the main event and it continues to be so. The Education Committee,
under the new leadership of Dr. John Goldblum, has scheduled varied offerings that provide attendees
with state-of-the-art information. The Long Course on Neoplasia of the Kidneys and
Urinary Bladder, led by course co-directors Drs. John Eble and David Grignon has an outstanding
faculty and topic matter and comes with a valuable CD with megabytes of information to take home and have
at your fingertips. There are also two special courses covering introductory and advanced molecular
pathology, and 60 short courses covering everything pathologists need to know and more. For those who
love to come early and stay late, there are 17 evening specialty conferences to entertain as well as
educate. Then there are the scientific sessions of 26 Companion Societies presented on the two days at
the beginning of the formal meeting that are closely monitored by the Academy to ensure that they are
high-quality presentations. We take good care of our members!
This meeting is an important forum for presentation of new scientific data. This year we have 1,707
presentations, including 238 by Pathologists-in-Training who are competing for the prestigious
Stowell-Orbison Awards. The participation of our membership in these activities is critical for the
progress of the discipline and we encourage everyone to present, attend and question the data.
The Nathan Kaufman Timely Topics lecture will be delivered this year by Dr. Frank D. McKeon,
Professor of Cell Biology at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. McKeon's laboratory discovered and cloned
p63, one of the first nuclear proteins associated with the basal cell phenotype, and contributed the
antibodies that are currently used in laboratories across the World in the diagnosis of carcinomas of the
breast, prostate and other tumors. His lecture, entitled "p63 Through the
Ages", will take us from these practical applications to the exciting roles of p63 in both
epithelial and germ cell development, portraying the functions of this gene as both the supervisor of
stem cell maintenance and the guardian of the germ cell genome. This promises to be an exciting lecture
that will not only acquaint practitioners with the expanded implications of this "household gene", but
introduce young scientists to a field that is ripe with opportunity.
For the Maude Abbott lecture, we will hear Dr. Christopher D.M. Fletcher, Professor of Pathology at
Harvard Medical School and Director of Surgical Pathology at Brigham
and Women's Hospital. Dr. Fletcher, is a preeminent authority on soft tissue neoplasia and author of
the textbook "Surgical Pathology of Tumors". From his vantage points as a recognized authority in this
field, a program director and mentor to countless numbers of young trainees, he will unfold for us "The Future of Academic Anatomic Pathology: Challenges and Opportunities". This
presentation will have something of great value for everyone, whether they be mentor, trainee, or on the
front lines of diagnostic surgical pathology.
The future of the Academy has been a subject of attention in the past few years. Under the leadership
of Drs. David Hardwick and Jeffrey Myers, a long-term strategic planning process was initiated in 2003.
The participants included a cadre of young and energetic members as well as senior and seasoned folds
with institutional memory and experience. The outcome of this exercise has been invaluable to secure a
process and a plan for future success. The results have served to guide all decisions that we make as an
organization. There is now an ad hoc committee for "Sustaining the Academy", capably chaired by our past
president, Sylvia Asa, which is examining ways to ensure the future of the Academy financially through
members donors, endowments and grants from external agencies and organizations.
The strategic planning process included an intense examination of the Bylaws, under the scrutiny of
Dr. Victor Reuter as Chairperson of the Bylaws Subcommittee. The results of this review are significant
changes in the by-laws, approved by the membership at the last annual meeting, which brings the governing
structure of the Academy up to standards for the 21st century.
This year, the President's Award is given to Jack Strong, who has been a vital force in the USCAP for
decades, including his role as past president. In recent years he has worked behind the scenes, managing
your investments and exerting an atmosphere of calm, not to mention highly tangible progress in the net
worth of the Academy amidst the uncertainties of the financial world. As a native of New Orleans, Jack
successfully weathered the hardships imposed upon him and his fellow citizens by Hurricane Katrina. He
has remained undeterred from his service to his profession and the USCAP and the Academy is fortunate to
enjoy the continued service of such an outstanding individual and role model.
The Academy could not be successful without the active participation of its members, and we celebrate
those who have made the most significant contributions with a series of awards. The Mostofi Award for
Service to the Academy will be presented to Dr Richard Fraser who has served both the USCAP and IAP with
distinction and was instrumental in the planning and execution of the IAP Centennial Congress in Montreal
last year. The Distinguished Pathologist Award this year honors an outstanding duo in pathology, Drs.
Nathan Kaufman and Bernard Wagner, two individuals whose vision sustained the USCAP for years and made it
what it is today. We also recognize the bright young people who are indeed, the real future of Pathology
with awards, including
the Stowell-Orbison, Autopsy and Surgical Pathology Awards for Pathologists-in-Training, the F.
Stephen Vogel Award, the Castleman Award and the Young Investigator Award, named after Ramzi Cotran.
The first meeting of the Academy that I attended was in 1976 in Toronto where, with my fellow
residents, I was awestruck by the opportunity to stand in the midst of the giants of pathology. My first
poster presentation was in 1980, my first short course presentation was in 1983, and I have enjoyed 32
years on both the giving and receiving end of the educational experience as a short course director,
evening session moderator, long course participant, scientific session moderator, presenter and resident
/fellow mentor. The annual meeting of the Academy is the highlight of my year. It is a time where our
trainees experience the exhilaration of presenting - and defending - new discoveries, reminding us of the
potential of this field that can be unlocked by their creativity and enthusiasm. It is also a time to
catch up with old friends with whom we have either trained or met through the many educational activities
of the Academy. The collective momentum of thousands of dedicated pathologists and trainees to attend,
learn and participate in this enterprise is immense and to observe this event from the vantage of Society
President is a great honor to me. It is a privilege to witness the best that this profession has to
offer to its members and ultimately, its patients.
Chris Crum
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