Annual Fall Lectures
For those who will be in the Toronto area on October 24, 2015, please join us for our annual fall lectures at Toronto Western Hospital. This year our morning session will focus on What’s New in Vasculitis with Dr’s. Christian Pagnoux and Lillian Barra. There have been many new developments in vasculitis care, treatment and clinical trials to review and discuss. This year’s format will allow enough time for the lectures on the most common vasculitic diseases, with an extended Q&A to address questions on all vasculitic diseases!
Our afternoon session starts with a research update from Dr. Katherine Siminovitch where you will learn about her summer work on all those fresh blood cell samples, and which hopefully will identify the potential stimulus, in the already known exact single gene change, in the HLA gene region, that is implicated in GPA and maybe MPA! And, we need to continue collecting samples from all vasculitis patients, especially Behcet’s and Giant Cell Arteritis!
And, new this year a number of patients, and support members, will share their experiences on Living with Vasculitis!
To register and for the lecture program just follow the link below! You may use your password from previous VFC events or create a new password! New VFC members are welcome.
Follow this link to register and to view the full program:
http://www.kintera.org/faf/home/default.asp?ievent=1148510
As in the past we will be collecting lab samples for Dr. Siminovitch’s ongoing research, including DNA from all vasculitis patients who have not contributed already, more fresh blood cells from GPA and MPA patients and study controls! Please note, spouses, and patient friends, are ideal controls as long at they do not have an autoimmune disease, and sorry – direct “blood” family members are not possible as controls for this study. In addition, for this study, we would also like to attempt a remote “group patient” collection, from within Canada. If interested please contact Jon at [email protected]
On behalf of the Board, we hope to see you on October 24th, 2015!
Jon Stewart
President
Vasculitis Foundation Canada /
Fondation vasculites Canada
PS: VFC is always looking for special volunteers! If you have an interest, or expertise, in WordPress (for our website), or Blackbaud, using HTML, (for our event registrations etc.), or have a special talent at fund raising, please let us know! Maybe you, or someone you know, would consider doing this important work. This is an ideal opportunity to brush up on some old skills, or learn new ones. VFC will consider paying for related courses if necessary.