CONFERENCE REGISTRATION
Register for the AMI 2006 Annual Conference online or download the form below to register by mail or pay by check. Send to AMI, Box 951735, Los Angeles, CA 90095. Submit by February 3, 2006, to receive the early bird rate.

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Thank you to our 2006 sponsors

ONLINE PROGRAM

Program Schedule PDF860kb
President's Message Conference Highlights                         Satruday Pre- Conference Workshop Featured Speakers Distinguished Scientists Program Committee Faculty List Learning Objectives Continuing Education Tob Abstract Winners

MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

It is my pleasure to invite you to the 2006 Annual Conference of the Academy of Molecular Imaging. The AMI membership continues to expand to include many disciplines within the biological, physical and pharmaceutical sciences; clinical disciplines of nuclear medicine, radiology and radiation oncology; and various areas of medicine. As a result, our annual conference continues to evolve along with the diversification of our attendees. We are proud to offer this unique program to our members and non-members alike. We will be presenting sessions in molecular imaging from a basic science perspective, from a drug development perspective and from a clinical perspective.

The AMI consists of the following four Institutes which represent the different areas of molecular imaging as defined by the needs of our individual members:

The goal of our annual conference is to provide a forum for attendees from various backgrounds to learn from each other as well as to influence the manner in which research is conducted, products and services are developed, and patients are cared for.

At this year’s conference, we will once again have an entire track specifically designed for administrators which will be held in the Exhibit Hall. This program will focus on the opportunities and challenges facing hospital and non-hospital PET and PET/CT providers. Topics will include coding, billing and payment, the value of the PET Registry project and much more.

The 2006 Distinguished Basic Science Awardee, Dr. Ralph Weissleder, and the 2006 Peter Valk Distinguished Clinical Science Awardee, Dr. Heinrich Schelbert, will deliver plenary lectures on their current and future work in the field. Dr. Weissleder and Dr. Schelbert will each receive $20,000 in recognition of their outstanding achievements in the field of molecular imaging.

The ICP will offer sessions on molecular imaging in neurology, oncology and cardiology among other informative topics. We will also have a track for technologists, which will begin with the basics and progress to more advanced topics specific to technologists. Basic scientists will be particularly interested in the combined IMI/SNIDD track which will provide the latest information on the role of molecular imaging in neurology, diabetes and oncology.

The IMT will once again host the Industry Forum. Speakers will present advances in clinical and small animal imaging technologies. In the Exhibit Hall, there will be brief scientific presentations by various IMT members.

For the third and final year, our meeting will be held at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. It is a wonderful resort with many things to offer, and the end of March is a great time of year for you and your family to enjoy it! For the 2007 conference, we will be holding a joint meeting with the Society of Molecular Imaging (SMI) in September 2007 in Providence, Rhode Island. We are looking forward to a very exciting meeting and to bringing you the very latest in molecular imaging.

Please join us in Orlando in March 2006 as the AMI continues to help shape the future of molecular imaging. Our conference, as always, exposes us to pioneers in research, to the latest in clinical practices, as well as to existing and new product developments.

I hope to see you there!
Sincerely,

Sanjiv Sam Gambhir M.D., Ph.D.
President, AMI

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHT

Saturday Pre-conference Workshops

Plan on maximizing your time by taking advantage of all the educational opportunities AMI is now offering on Saturday, March 25th, 2006.

· 8:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
PET Oncology Review for Technologists

New additions!

· 9:00 – 11:30 a.m.
Pre-clinical Animal Anesthesia and Imaging Techniques Workshop
This workshop focuses on what to do BEFORE you image your animals, to help you acquire reproducible, accurate and useful data from your experiments. Topics include anesthetic options, temperature control, reproducibility, fasting effects and methods needed for longitudinal research using immunodeficient animals that require a pathogen-free environment. Separate registration fee required.

· 11:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
The Significance of cGMP in Development and Production of PET Tracers Symposium
Is your lab ready for the new cGMP regulations?
This symposium is intended to educate research investigators, physicians and technical personnel on the upcoming FDA regulations on PET, with special emphasis on the implementation of cGMPs. Speakers from industry, academia and the FDA will present and then participate in an open discussion with the audience. The goal is to make the cGMPs understandable to everyone and, thus, make compliance easier to achieve.

· 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
IRAT Open Discussion: An Opportunity to Meet with Imaging and Oncologic Investigators to Advance the Role of Imaging as a Biomarker
Learn about NCI's newly established Imaging Response Assessment Teams (IRATs) from comprehensive cancer centers as they explore issues related to the assessment of response to therapy via imaging techniques. This open session with members of the IRAT Network's leaders and collaborators will discuss ways to strengthen clinical collaboration between imaging scientists and oncologic investigators, explain the IRAT model and its goals, and address other issues of mutual interest. There is no fee for this session but pre-registration is required, please visit https://wx17.registeredsite.com/user1017216/irats/meeting_reg.asp?regid=

Industry Forum - Exhibit Hall
Saturday, March 25, 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

We will kick off the 2006 AMI Annual Conference with the popular and well-attended Industry Forum. The AMI industry partners hand-select speakers to present the latest advances in molecular imaging technologies and applications. This is a unique opportunity to hear the industry’s outlook of the molecular imaging field.

Administrative Track - Exhibit Hall
Sunday, March 26

The AMI is committed to providing a comprehensive Administrative Track for 2006. Many coding updates are taking place in 2006 that will affect PET and PET/CT providers. This program will focus on the opportunities and challenges facing hospital and non-hospital PET and PET/CT providers, including a thorough update on coding, billing and payment in 2006; a marketing/education session that will help providers maximize the value of the PET Registry project; a review of the Medicare coverage criteria and update on coding for PET, PET/CT, radiopharmaceuticals and diagnostic CT procedures; a comprehensive update on the PET Registry project; and an overview of the future of PET/CT.

FEATURED SPEAKERS

Jamie Eberling, Ph.D.
Jamie Eberling is an Associate Adjunct Professor at UC Davis and a Faculty Medical Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Eberling has been involved in research on neuroimaging of aging and neurodegeneration, including preclinical and clinical studies of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease. She has expertise in the technical aspects of PET imaging, and contributed to the development of techniques for the kinetic analysis of PET data using various radiotracers.

Alan M. Fogelman, M.D.
Alan M. Fogelman is the Castera Professor of Medicine and Executive Chairman, Department of Medicine at David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, from which he also graduated. He is the Director of the UCLA Atherosclerosis Research Unit in the UCLA Division of Cardiology. He has previously served as the Editor of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology and as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Lipid Research. He has been a member of the editorial committee of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and served as President of the Western Society of Clinical Investigation. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of Professors of Medicine.

Sandra J. Horning, M.D.
Sandra J. Horning is Professor of Medicine (Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation) at Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California. Dr. Horning earned her medical degree at the University of Iowa, completed internal medicine training at the University of Rochester and completed a Medical Oncology fellow- ship at Stanford University, where she subsequently joined the faculty. At Stanford, Dr. Horning has served as a University Fellow, a School of Medicine Senator, a University Faculty Senator, and is currently chair of the Stanford Cancer Center's Scientific Review Committee. She is Chair of the Lymphoma Committee of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) and principal investigator for phase II and III clinical trials in Hodgkin's disease and lymphoma. Dr. Horning is active in a number of professional societies including the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), where she has been chosen to represent members as President 2005-2006. Dr. Horning has served on the Oncology Drug Advisory Committee for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and on the Clinical Oncology Study Section from 2001-2003. Dr. Horning has served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, Clinical Lymphoma, Leukemia and Lymphoma and the American Journal of Medicine. She is the author or co-author of numerous book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles, reviews and editorials.

Charles Sawyers, M.D.
Charles Sawyers is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and Director of the Prostate Cancer Program Area at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Sawyers received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the UCSF Medical Center, and a clinical fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Molecular Biology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Sawyers has won numerous honors and awards, including the Franklin D. Murphy Prize, Stohlman Scholar of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Doris Duke Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award, the UCSD-Nature Medicine Translational Medicine Award, the Bristol-Myers Squibb ÒFreedom to ExploreÓ Award, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Association of Cancer Research and the David A. Karnofsky Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology. He has been elected Vice President, American Society of Clinical Investigation 2005-2008. He is the Peter Bing Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and is on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Cancer Research.

William Zeigler Potter, M.D., Ph.D.
William Potter is the Vice President, Clinical Neuroscience, of Merck Research Laboratories. He has a distinguished history as a "bench to bedside" investigator focused on bridging preclinical research on mechanisms of actions of drugs used in major psychiatric disorders and evaluating novel compounds in patients. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Indiana University, research on the latter being done as part of a Public Health Service (PHS) fellowship at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in the laboratory of B.B. Brodie, Ph.D., one of the founders of the field of psychopharmacology. He remained in the PHS for 25 years during which he completed a residency at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. and was boarded in Psychiatry and then Clinical Pharmacology. For the bulk of these 25 years, Bill headed a research group as Chief of the Section of Clinical Psychopharmacology in the Intra-mural Program of the National Institute of Mental Health. He and his group disproved the then prevalent hypothesis of independent actions of antidepressants on the noradrenergic and serotonergic systems and initiated investigations into the intracellular actions of lithium and valproate, which continue to this day. In 1996, Bill retired from the PHS to join Lilly Research Labs and then joined Merck Research Laboratories in 2004. Currently, he is active in a major National Institute of Aging/Pharmaceutical Industry collaborative effort to assess the utility of brain imaging as a source of biomarkers of drug effects on the progression of MCI and Alzheimer's disease. Bill is also working with the FDA Critical Path Initiative on improving clinical develop-ment of novel CNS compounds.

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The 2006 Peter Valk Distinguished Clinical Science Awardee

Heinrich R. Schelbert, M.D., Ph.D., is the George V. Taplin Professor of Nuclear Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine of the University of California at Los Angeles. His major research interest has been the development and validation of noninvasive radionuclide imaging techniques for the study of cardiovascular function and the application of these new techniques for the study of functional and metabolic consequences of coronary artery disease in the human heart. Major accomplishments include the discovery of the specific pattern of blood flow and metabolism in chronically dysfunctional myocardium that is predictive of its potentially reversibility and development and validation of the PET-based technique for measuring regional myocardial blood flow in absolute units using 13N-ammonia. Dr. Schelbert has edited several books on cardiovascular imaging, published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles and serves as a regular reviewer for numerous cardiology and nuclear medicine journals. Dr. Schelbert has most recently been named as the Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious Journal of Nuclear Medicine. He is a two-time recipient of the Georg von Hevesy Prize by the World Federation of Nuclear Medicine and Biology, the George de Hevesy Nuclear Medicine Pioneer Award by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award by the American Heart Association.

The 2006 Distinguished Basic Science Awardee

Ralph Weissleder, M.D., Ph.D., is a Professor at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Molecular Imaging Research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Attending Interventional Radiologist at MGH. Dr. Weissleder is also a member of the Dana Farber Harvard Cancer Center, the Broad Institute (Chemical Biology Program) and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI), leading its Imaging Program. Dr. Weissleder's research interests include the development of novel molecular imaging techniques, tools for early detection of cancer and development of nanomaterials for sensing. His research has been translational, and some of his developments have led to advanced clinical trials with anticipated major impacts when these methods become routinely available. Dr. Weissleder is currently the principal investigator of several RO1 NIH grants, a P50 Center grant, a R24 grant and a UO1 consortium focusing on nanotechnology. He has published over 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals, has authored and co-authored several textbooks and holds 15 patents. He is a founding member of the Society for Molecular Imaging and served as its President in 2002. His work has been honored with numerous awards including the J. Taylor International Prize in Medicine, the Millennium Pharmaceuticals Innovator Award, the AUR Memorial Award, the ARRS President's Award and the Society for Molecular Imaging Lifetime Achievement Award.