Aspen Lung Conference

THOMAS L. PETTY ASPEN LUNG CONFERENCE,63rd Annual Meeting
“ARDS in the 21st Century: New Insights into Clinical and Mechanistic Heterogeneity”, Chairs, Eric Schmidt, M.D., Lorraine Ware, M.D., Rachel Zemans, M.D.,June 9-12, 2021
The Gant Conference Center, Aspen, Colorado

On June 9-12, 2021, the 63rd Annual Thomas L. Petty Aspen Lung Conference will convene at The Gant Conference Center in Aspen, Colorado. The theme of the conference will be “ARDS in the 21st Century: New Insights into Clinical and Mechanistic Heterogeneity.” Although we hope to be able to meet in person in Aspen, in view of the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic we are preparing for the contingency of a virtual meeting, likely with the same dates. We will keep you apprised of decisions regarding the possibility of a virtual meeting, with a final decision anticipated by January 15, 2021.
The Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) is a common syndrome arising from numerous, heterogeneous, and often-independent disease processes. Accordingly, a single ARDS study drug, if uniformly applied to all patients regardless of underlying disease pathophysiology, would likely fail to consistently improve patient outcomes. For clinical studies to overcome this obstacle, a new appreciation of ARDS mechanistic and phenotypic heterogeneity is required, enabling future precision medicine approaches to the recognition and treatment of lung injury. The 2021 Thomas L. Petty Aspen Lung Conference, will integrate basic, translational, and clinical approaches to address the impact of ARDS heterogeneity, with a focus on (1) understanding the presence and therapeutic significance of ARDS mechanistic and phenotypic subtypes, (2) exploring multi-cellular and multi-systemic mechanisms responsible for this heterogeneity, and (3) determining how to best account for disease heterogeneity during clinical trial design and outcome assessment. Heterogeneity within COVID-19 ARDS, as well as between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 ARDS, will also be discussed. This Conference will bring together basic, translational, and clinical ARDS researchers while welcoming trainees in pulmonology and critical care medicine, with the goal of identifying shared interests that will lead to more productive research and more effective personalized therapies. The varied scientific themes and therapeutic strategies emerging during the conference will be reconciled in a concluding Conference Summary presented by Dr. Thomas Martin (University of Washington). Three Thomas L. Petty Fellow Travel Awards will be awarded to help defray the costs for female and under-represented minority fellows to present an abstract.
Abstract deadline is February 14, 2021. For more information, contact: [email protected] (Phone: (303)358-2797 or visit our website at www.aspenlungconference.org