35th Ernst Klenk Symposium in Molecular Medicine

Rare Diseases: From mechanisms to therapy and beyond

It has been our great pleasure to welcome 300 participants to the 35th Ernst Klenk Symposium in Molecular Medicine 2019 on "Rare Diseases: From mechanisms to therapy and beyond".

Our special thanks to Eva Luise Köhler, who opened the symposium by welcoming all participants. During her speech she adressed the importance of research on rare diseases for the development of innovative therapeutic approaches to help patients. She initiated together with her husband - Prof. Dr. Horst Köhler, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany - the foundation of the Eva Luise und Horst Köhler Stiftung- Für Menschen mit Seltenen Erkrankungen. Since many years she is patroness of the Allianz Chronischer Seltener Erkrankungen (Achse).

We thank Professor Arthur H M Burghes (The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus - US) for his contributions as honorary guest speaker in the Klenk Lecture.

Thanks to the outstanding support of Professor Burghes we succeeded to setup and to present a scientific program with international leading experts in the research field of rare diseases and therapy.

Thanks to all our guest speakers

State of the art in rare disease discovery: Clara D M van Karnebeek (Amsterdam, NL) - William A Gahl (Bethesda, US) • Georg F Hoffmann (Heidelberg, DE)

Technologies to understand functional impact of human variation causing rare diseases:
Lea M Starita (Seattle, US) • Joseph V Bonventre (Boston, US) • Karlien L M Coene (Nijmegen, NL)

Small molecule based-therapy in neurological disorders: Frank C Bennett (Carlsbad, US) - Richard S Finkel (Orlando, US) • Nicholas Katsanis (Chicago, US) • Adrian R Krainer(Cold Spring Harbor, US)

Gene therapy to treat rare disorders: Barry J Byrne (Gainesville, US) • Hélène Puccio (Illkirch, FR)

Rare kidney and endocrine disorders and therapy: Heiko Krude (Berlin, DE) • Vicente E Torres (Rochester, US) • Pierre Ronco (Paris, FR)

Cancer and rare immune-mediated disease therapy and regulation: Michael R Speicher (Graz, AT) • Marie Scully (London, GB)

Metabolic disorders and therapy: Frances M Platt(Oxford, GB) • Carmine Settembre (Pozzuoli-Napoli, IT)

Muscle, bone and dermis genetic disorders - from mechanism to treatment
Frank Rauch (Montreal, CA) • Holm Schneider (Erlangen, DE)

What's next:
Sir John Burn (Newcastle upon Tyne, GB)

 

Klenk Poster Awards 2019

The Poster Evaluation Committee honored the three best posters presented at the Klenk Poster Session 2019:

Lars Buschmann - Institute of Human Genetics - RWTH Medical Faculty, Aachen, DE
F 02: Aberrant DEGS1 sphingolipid metabolism impairs central and peripheral nervous system

Jonas Goergens
- Dept. I of Internal Medicine - University Hospital Cologne, DE
E 03: UBQLN4 represses homologous recombination and is overexpressed in aggressive tumors

Mengjie  Zhu
- Dept. of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine - University Hospital Cologne, DE
G 04: Collagen XII- a novel stabilizer for musculoskeletal system

We received excellent feedback from the participants regarding the guest speakers' contribution who presented top quality and novel insights into the various aspects of rare diseases.

Once again we would like to thank all guest speakers for their contributions, who presented novel insights into the various aspects of their research on rare diseases and discussed their latest research developments with an enthusiastic audience of scientists and physicians. Many thanks to all participants and in particular to those who presented a poster during the Klenk Poster Session 2019.

Brunhilde Wirth and Guenter Schwarz
Chairs of the Cologne Klenk Symposium Committee 2019

Organization

Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC) - University of Cologne

The CMMC organizers thank the Cologne Convention Bureau for their excellent support.
Further information: http://www.conventioncologne.de

We gratefully acknowledge support by

Certified with 17 CME Credits

by the Nordrheinische Akademie für aerztliche Fort- und Weiterbildung, Duesseldorf (Germany).

Klenk Poster 2019

Program Klenk 2019

Industrial Sponsors

We gratefully acknowledge the support by our industrial partners.

Avexis € 5.000,- • Roche € 5.000,- • Sanofi € 2.500,- • Otsuka € 1.500,- • Biogen € 1.400,- • Proteintech € 1.400,- • Analytik Jena € 800,- • PerkinElmer € 800,- • Sartorius € 800,- • Active Motif € 500,- • PHCbi € 500,- •
LMS Consult conference material • Promega conference material

The sponsoring is used for conference rooms, technology, travel expenses of the speakers, conference handouts and event management.