The 62nd Annual Fall Conference and Scientific Session of the American Heart Association Council for High Blood Pressure Research in Association With the Council on the Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease

Abstract

This supplemental issue of Hypertension contains selected articles based on presentations at the 62nd Annual Fall Conference and Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association Council for High Blood Pressure Research (CHBPR), held September 17 to 20, 2008, in Atlanta, Georgia. The meeting was cosponsored by the Council on Kidney in Cardiovascular Disease (CKCD). The conference was a huge success, with attendees from around the world. The program committee and Drs Gabriel Navar, Chair of the CHBPR, and Jeff Sands, Chair of CKCD, are to be congratulated. The council meeting was preceded by a workshop on “Novel Signaling Paradigms in Vascular and Renal Disease.” Drs Nancy Kanagy and Mathias Barton organized the workshop, and more than 250 individuals attended. The workshop ended with a presentation by Dr Paul Vanhoutte titled, “The Past, Present and Future of Signaling in the Vascular Wall.” Dr Vanhoutte’s talk also opened the fall conference. There were 727 registered attendees at the main council meeting, and 423 abstracts were selected for presentation as oral and poster communications. In addition to the free communications, presentations by award recipients contributed to an excellent meeting. The awards presented at the meeting recognized outstanding achievement in hypertension research. The premier award of the CHBPR, given to investigators who have made outstanding discoveries in hypertension research, is the Novartis Award for Hypertension Research. The recipients of the 2008 Novartis Award were Drs Mordecai P. Blaustein, John W. Funder, and J. Carlos Romero (Figure 1). Dr Blaustein, Professor of Physiology and Medicine at the University of Maryland, was honored for his pioneering discoveries on the sodium-calcium exchanger and its role in the increased vascular tone characteristic of hypertension. Dr Funder, Professor of Medicine at Monash University and Senior Fellow at Prince Henry’s Institute of Medical Research, was honored for his seminal studies …