American Society of Nephrology's annual meeting in Denver

[Joy Lewis O'Brien]

Hello all,
I am excited to let you know that I am at the American Society of Nephrology's annual meeting in Denver, representing the Foundation and striving to be your eyes and ears regarding relevant news
and updates regarding the lives of aHUS patients. Yesterday morning I attended a poster session in which research from one study was presented about the clinical trials with Soliris (eculizumab). The crowd in front of the poster was 2-3 people deep and I had a hard time even getting close enough to listen to all the questions, which were ably fielded by Dr. Christoph Licht, who is listed on the Doc to Doc Registry. There were also four other posters about aHUS and complement factor research, including

• The efficacy of plasma therapy by Dr. Chantal Loirat, Marie-Alice Macher, Patrick Niaudet, Albert Bensman, Michel Tsimaratos, Georges
  Deschenes and Veronique Fremeaux-Bacchi from Paris
  
• Complement dysregulation in HUS (including aHUS) by Arvind Bagga, Aditi Sinha and Pankaj Hari from New Delhi
• Platelet uptake and release of complement Factor H by Viola F. van Eimeren, Fred G. Plutero, Walter H. Kahr, and Christoph Licht from
  Toronto
• A new disease mechanism for MPGN II/DDD: Increased CFHR1 expression results in competitive loss of CFH cofactor activity by
  Christoph Licht, Paul S. Thorner, Christine Skerka, and Peter F. Zipfel
  from Toronto

People are very interested and excited about this research and learning more about aHUS. I was able to pass along information about the Foundation's website to several interested folks, including some who are interested in connecting from Europe (which looks more possible with Linda's work to partner with EURORDIS).

I will continue to post about my meetings with researchers and the sessions I attended to learn all I can about anything that might help patients, regardless of where they stand in their treatment. I will update more
later!

Thanks to you all,
Joy

[Linda Burke]

Great, Joy! Your blog is very informative - that you for this ASN conference overview. We look forward to reading your future posts that have detailed information regarding the above presentations. I'm sure that all other Members of this website join me in a HUGE shout of thanks for representing the aHUS community at this important renal conference.

[Cheryl Biermann]

How exciting there is so much interest in this information, it is great to have eyes and ears in this inner circle! Thank you for sharing your observations.

[Kamal D Shah]

Thanks so much for the updates Joy. Looking forward to more!