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New focus on member input at ADA annual meeting

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Maureen Gannon

Attendees at this year’s American Diabetes Association’s 78^th Scientific Sessions can expect a new focus on member’s suggestions, with several novel presentations that incorporate solicited ideas in addition to a mix of breakthrough trial data and engaging research presentations that span the specialty.

The annual meeting, taking place from June 22 to 26, will bring together more than 16,000 attendees from 120 countries to the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando to hear from experts across the rapidly growing diabetes field. This year’s schedule includes more than 2,500 original research presentations, including symposia, oral abstract sessions, interest group discussions, meet-the-expert sessions, and special lectures and addresses.

“This really is an international meeting — 60% of our attendees are not from the U.S.,” Maureen Gannon, PhD, chair of the Scientific Sessions Meeting Planning Committee, told Endocrine Today. “You’re interacting with people from all over the world with cutting-edge research from all over the world. With the combination of clinical research, education, policy, behavioral science, basic science and clinical trials, the breadth of research is very different from other meetings.”

For this year’s meeting, the planning committee solicited session ideas from last year’s attendees, offering the opportunity to submit session ideas complete with titles and suggested speakers through a web portal. The result, Gannon said, was 50 submissions, with 12 submissions placed on the program either as full sessions or combined with sessions the committee already planned.

“We thought, we’re getting all these suggestions every year in the survey, and we really didn’t have a mechanism to put that into practice,” Gannon said in an interview. “We got so many suggestions this way. These were included with the same equal weight as committee members’ suggestions, and we incorporated quite a few of them.”

Some of these suggestions attendees will find on the program include the Restoring Insulin Secretion (RISE) Study in Youth and Adults Baseline Data and Results of the Pediatric Medication Study; the Veterans Affairs Diabetes Trial (VADT) at 15 Years; The Lancet Commission on Diabetes — Societal Solutions to Combat Diabetes and Surveillance of Kidney Disease; and Comorbidities among People with Diabetes — What We Can Learn from the CDC’s Chronic Kidney Disease Surveillance System.

Other highlights include the following:

• Lessons Learned from the Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) Study Insights into Early Autoimmune Type 1 Diabetes will be presented Saturday, June 23 by Chair Marian Rewers, MD, PhD, of the Barbara David Center for Diabetes at the university of Colorado. The presentation is supported by a grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

• Gerald I. Shulman, MD, PhD , from Yale University, recipient of this year’s Banting Medal for Scientific Achievement, will speak on Sunday, June 24. Schulman pioneered the use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy to non-invasively examine intracellular glucose and fat metabolism in humans, particularly in skeletal muscle, Gannon said. Shulman has conducted basic and clinical investigative studies on the cellular mechanisms of insulin resistance that have enhanced the understanding of type 2 diabetes.

• Lora K. Heisler, PhD, from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, will give the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award (OSAA) lecture Monday, June 25. Heisler is known for her clinically significant findings that contributed to the development of new obesity drugs targeting specific serotonin receptors in the brain, Gannon said. “The OSAA has been given out every year since 1957, and Dr. Heisler is only the third woman to receive it,” Gannon said, adding that past recipients were Rosalyn Yalow, PhD, in 1961, and Barbara Kahn, MD, in 1995.

• William T. Cefalu , MD, chief scientific, medical and mission officer of the ADA, will chair a symposium on SGLT2 inhibition for type 1 diabetes management on Tuesday, June 26, including a presentation on how to avoid the risk for diabetic ketoacidosis.

“I’m an islet biologist, and I’ve found that you can get closed off in your own research world,” Gannon said. “At ADA, you can explore things you wouldn’t normally hear about, and the quality of the speakers is outstanding. You’ll learn a lot, and the committee works hard to get the best people in each research area. We work hard to make sure this is educational for everyone. We also try to encourage our speakers to present unpublished data, so attendees are getting the most current information.”

The Endocrine Today and Healio.com staff will provide coverage from ADA 2018, including reports on the sessions, onsite interviews and much more. For more information on the ADA agenda and registration, visit https://professional.diabetes.org/meeting/scientific-sessions/78th-scientific-sessions. – by Regina Schaffer

Disclosure: Gannon is chair of the Scientific Sessions Meeting Planning Committee.