The Honorable John E. Porter, J.D., is a Partner with Hogan & Hartson LL.P. in Washington, D.C., and was a member of the United Stated House of Representatives (R-IL-10th) for 21 years. While in Congress, Porter served on the House Appropriations Committee and as Chairman of its Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. He has been honored for his efforts to secure unprecedented funding increases for the National Institutes of Health. Porter was the 2000 recipient of the Mary Wood Lasker Award for Public Service, which honored his wise and perceptive leadership on behalf of medical research funding and his deep commitment to strengthening the science enterprise. Porter is a member of a number of boards, including Research!America, PBS and the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health.

Randy Bollinger, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor and Chief of the Division of General Surgery at Duke University Medical Center (DUMC). He is also a professor of immunology at DUMC and is a consultant in the Department of Surgery at the Durham VA Medical Center. He also serves as a member of the North Carolina Association for Biomedical Research (NCABR) Board of Directors' Executive Committee. His primary clinical and research interests are organ transplantation, particularly of the kidney, pancreas and liver; xenotransplantation; islet transplantation; immunosuppression; transplantation ethics and inflammatory bowel disease.

R. Sanders “Sandy” Williams, M.D., is Dean of the Duke University School of Medicine and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Williams is a practicing cardiologist and researcher. Prior to his appointment at Duke, he was Chief of the division of cardiology and Director of the Ryburn Center for Molecular Cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. A graduate of Princeton University and Duke University Medical School, Dr. Williams did his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and completed a fellowship in cardiology at Duke University. He served on the Duke University School of Medicine faculty for nine years. Dr. Williams has published more than 150 medical and scientific articles and holds five patents for his work.

Moderator:

Randal Bollinger, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor and Chief of the Department of General Surgery at Duke University Medical Center. He also serves as a member of the North Carolina Association for Biomedical Research (NCABR) Board of Directors' Executive Committee.

Panelists:

Research Overview: Stem Cell and Cord Blood Research
Joanne Kurtzberg, M.D., is Director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program, Professor of Pediatrics, and Associate Professor of Pathology at the Duke University School of Medicine. Kurtzberg is also Director of the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank, one of two public banks in the U.S. funded by the National Institutes of Health. Under her leadership, the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program pioneered the use of both matched and mismatched umbilical cord blood (UCB) stem cells in patients who do not have a sibling donor, thus extending this life-saving therapy to many more patients. She has demonstrated that UCB transplantation in early infancy can correct inborn errors of metabolism involving brain, liver bone and cartilage. She currently is a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Biological Modifiers Advisory Committee, which makes recommendations about how the FDA should proceed in regulating stem cell research and the development of stem cell-based products.

Adult Tissue-Derived Stem Cells and Therapeutics
Steven A. Goldman, M.D., Ph.D., is the Nathan Cummings Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Cornell University Medical College and a Senior Attending Neurologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Goldman was one of the discoverers of neuronal production in the brain of adult animals. Over the past decade, his group was the first to isolate neural progenitor and stem cells from the adult human brain. These include cells that can give rise to new forebrain neurons, cells that can produce new white matter oligodendrocytes, and others that can generate new hippocampal neurons. He and his colleagues are now assessing the function of both adult and fetal human neural stem cells in several disease models, including multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and ALS. They have also established methods for inducing neuronal regeneration by stimulating the brain's own progenitor cells.

Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines
Jeff Rothstein, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience and Vice Chairman for Research in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is also Co-Director of the MDA/ALS Clinic and Director of ALS Research at Johns Hopkins. His specialization is in Neuromuscular disease, with a particular focus on Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Other clinical areas relevant to his laboratory-based research include idiopathic stupor, epilepsy and motor neuron degeneration. His laboratory research includes various molecular mechanisms of selective neurodegeneration in motor neuron diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; identification of novel drug or peptide therapeutics to delay or prevent motor neuron degeneration in ALS thru the use of cell culture and transgenic models of ALS; and use of neuronal and non-neuronal stem cell therapies to treat motor neurons diseases including ALS and Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

Moderator:

Kathryn Whetten-Goldstein, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University's Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy.

Panelists Include:

J. Kyle Kinner, J.D., M.P.A., is a legislative policy advisor for health issues for Senator John Edwards (D-NC). Before joining Senator Edwards' staff, Kinner served as Medicare staff counsel for the Senate Finance Committee under Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), where he was responsible for issues affecting health care entitlement programs. He served as a Presidential Management Intern at the National Institutes of Health before coming to work for Congress, where he served as a staff analyst for the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and the National Human Genome Research Institute from 1998 until 1999.
 

Moderator:

William Raspberry is a Pulitzer-Prize winning syndicated columnist for The Washington Post and the Knight Professor of the Practice of Communications and Journalism at the DeWitt Wallace Center and The Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his commentaries on crime, AIDS, the Nation of Islam and violent rap lyrics.

Panelists Include:

Rhonda Rowland is the medical correspondent for the health news unit at CNN. Rowland plays an integral role in the medical unit's programming, which includes daily packages, the half-hour weekend show Your Health and coverage of breaking medical news. Since joining CNN in 1986, Rowland has received numerous awards from health and medical organizations for stories she has written and produced.

Karen Garloch has been a medical writer for the Charlotte Observer since 1987. She has won North Carolina Press Association awards for investigative stories about nursing home abuses and about medication errors that led to two deaths at a Charlotte hospital. She has also received awards for serial narratives: "Called to Medicine," about the first year in the life of a family practice resident, and "Vernon's Goodbye," about a man who died of cancer with hospice care.

John Mangels is a science writer for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, where he is responsible for local and national coverage of basic and applied science. Most recently, he has been working on stories about chemical and biological weapons, the scientific aspects of terrorism and its aftermath, and the science of steel-making technology. Mangels, who has written about science and medicine for 20 years, has won numerous awards for his work.