The 13th Asia & Oceania Thyroid Association (AOTA) Congress was recently held in International Convention Center, Sydney, Australia, in August 18-21, 2019.
The congress was held in conjunction with Endocrine Society of Australia (ESA) and Society for Reproductive Biology (SRB) annual meeting, chaired by Prof. Duncan Topliss from Australia.
The number of registered participants in Sydney AOTA 2019 was 91 from AOTA’s member countries, and total of 125 abstracts were submitted from Australia(18), Korea(57), Japan(11), China(9), Taiwan(7), Indonesia(6), India(3), Thailand (3), Singapore(3), Italy (3), Unites States (2), Bangladesh(1), Iran(1), and Pakistan (1).
Members of local organizing committee were Duncan Topliss (AOTA LOC Chair) (Alfred Health), Elizabeth Chua (AOTA LOC) (University of Sydney), Diana Learoyd (AOTA/ESA LOC) (University of Sydney) and Donald McLeod (AOTA LOC) (QIMR Berghofer). Members of program organizing committee were Roderick Clifton-Bligh (Chair) (University of Sydney), Sun Wook Kim (Sungkyunkwam University, Korea), Iwao Sugitani (Nippon Medical School, Japan) and Paul M Yen (Duke NUS Medical School, Singapore).
The congress started on August 18th with preconference activities including Thyroid Ultrasound Workshop. In opening session, Prof. Jae Hoon Chung from Korea delivered a plenary lecture with the title of ‘TERT promoter mutation and its clinical implication in thyroid cancer’. In the opening session, we had a special time for Awarding Professor Creswell Eastman, Australia, the inaugural “Distinguished Service Award of the AOTA” in acknowledgement of his distinguished contributions to clinical and laboratory thyroidology, his work to establish and support AOTA, his regional and international work in the epidemiology and eradication of iodine deficiency disease (IDD), and his mentoring of colleagues to develop and contribute to clinical thyroidology in our region. His lifetime contributions were narrated by Dr. Teofilo San Luis Jr. and plaque and prize money were awarded to Prof. Eastman by President of AOTA, Professor Takashi Akamizu.
Scientific program was consisted of 2 plenary lectures, 2 invited lectures, 4 symposium sessions (12 topics), 3 meet-the-professor sessions, 6 oral sessions (48 papers) and poster sessions (77 papers). Among them, 11 young investigators were awarded travel grant for distinguished abstract (Pantea Nazeri from Iran, Sayaka Yamada, Takashi Okamura from Japan, Chih Chen Wang, Yen-Hsiang Chang from Taiwan, Eyun Song, Choonyoung Kim, Sae Rom Chung, Jonghwa Ahn, Kwangsoon Kim, Hana Kim from Korea) and the award budget were provided by AOTA.
On Aug, 21st, a second plenary lecture was delivered by Prof. Yuji Nagayama from Japan with a title of ‘Animal models of thyroid diseases’. AOTA Nagataki-Fujifilm prize of year 2017 awardee was Prof. Weiping Teng from China, and he delivered a prize lecture titled ‘Increasing TSH Levels in China’. Nagataki-Fujifilm prize of year 2019 was awarded to Prof. Won Bae Kim from Korea, and he gave us a prize lecture titled ‘Unmet Clinical Needs in Thyroid Cancer’.
The 13th AOTA congress was closed with promise that we would meet again in the 16th International Thyroid Congress, September 8-13, 2020 in Xi’an, China ( www.itc2020.org ) at Qujiang International Conference and Exhibition Center.
Asia and Oceania Thyroid Association
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