7th International Congress on Toxoplasmosis

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Seventh International Congress on Toxoplasmosis will be held in May 2003 at the Dolce-Tarrytown Conference Center. The Toxoplasma meeting is an international meeting that has occurred every other year since 1990 and lasts four to five days. This meeting alternates between the United States and Europe and will be organized by Kami Kim and Louis Weiss in 2003. Toxoplasma gondii is a major cause of opportunistic infections in AIDS patients as well as birth defects in infants exposed in utero. In addition to its clinical importance, Toxoplasma gondii has emerged as a model organism for studies on all of the Apicomplexa as was highlighted in a recent review on development of antimalarials by Robert Ridley (Nature 2002 Feb 7;415(6872):686-93). The Apicomplexa include most of the major protozoan pathogens of humans and animals, such as Plasmodia (malaria), Babesia, Theileria, Cryptosporidia, Cyclospora, Neospora, Eimeria, and Isospora. This meeting is important in that it gathers all of the laboratories working on T. gondii and allows for the exchange of new ideas and approaches both on a formal and informal level. Participants come from throughout the world (Europe, US, South America, Australia, Japan). The goals of the meeting are to disseminate new advances in the field, highlight the importance of T. gondii as a model system, foster collaboration and field-wide initiatives, and to introduce new or younger investigators to the leaders in the field. This meeting has fostered an environment of cooperation and collaboration in work on T. gondii that is not seen in other parasitology disciplines and has facilitated rapid and sustained progress in research on this pathogen.