Welcome

Professor Edison Liu

President, Human Genome Organisation HGM 2012

I would like to invite you to the 16th HGM meeting to be held in Sydney Australia where the main topic is the "Genetics and Genomics in Personalised Medicine".

The focus of this meeting is consistent with one of the aims of the Human Genome Organization which is to foster the integration of genomic sciences in biology and medicine towards improving human health. The power of our current sequencing and genotyping technologies and their attendant analytical tools is providing remarkable precision and completeness in our understanding of the genetic causes of disease. In this meeting, we will explore the impact of next generation genomic approaches on medicine and health.

In collaboration with the genetics community of Australia, and the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, we have developed an exciting programme that spans human migration to human disease, from common to Mendelian disorders, from the impact of a single gene to the network control of physiologic conditions, and from technology to ethics. Special programmes on the makings of a bioeconomy, and on the genomics of indigenous populations will be included.

The topics, the speakers, the beautiful venue in Australia, all converge to make HGM 2012 a memorable meeting.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Professor Ron Trent

Chair, Sydney Local Organising Committee HGM 2012

On behalf of the Local Organising Committee it is my pleasure to invite you to attend HGM 2012 which will be held in the picturesque harbour city of Sydney.

We are indeed fortunate to be working in the field of genetics and genomics at a time when new discoveries are occurring so rapidly. Therefore, the opportunity to stop and spend a few days reviewing what has happened as well as establishing new contacts and networks will be the main goals of HGM 2012. The theme of HGM2012 is Personalised medicine which reflects the increasing importance that genetic and genomic discoveries are having on how medicine is being practised.

The Local Organising Committee has worked with HUGO to identify topics of contemporary scientific and clinical interest in personalised medicine and there will be a historic joint 1 day meeting with the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia that will focus particularly on the translational aspects of personalised medicine.

Those who have never been to Sydney will have a memorable surprise with a lively city waiting to be explored and enjoyed. Australians have a well earned reputation for friendliness and conference participants will leave Sydney wanting to come back. I strongly urge you to take a few extra days to walk on top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge or fly to Central Australia to view the beauties of our desert country. Heading north to Brisbane and beyond will take you to the World Heritage Great Barrier Reef. Our New Zealand friends over in the Land of the Long White Cloud are only 3 hours flying distance from Sydney and will give you a warm welcome and spectacular scenery. How can you not come to Sydney in March 2012?

Synopsis of meeting

Though the practice of medicine has always sought to "personalise" the care and treatment of patients, the genetics-to-genomics revolution has taken this to the next level with comprehensive, precise, and quantitative genomic technologies. Next generation DNA sequencing, SNP arrays, novel amplification technologies, and microfluidic devices with the accompanying computational advances now speed discovery and the resolution of diagnosis by orders of magnitude. The promise of precise diagnosis, of accurate patient stratification for risk assessment and treatment, and sensitive monitoring is likely to be fulfilled in the next decade. Underpinning all this are the advances in computational biology and eHealth that are necessary to deal with the impending information overload. HGM 2012 will explore the fundamental, translational, and clinical sciences driving the progress of this personalised medicine movement.

With the Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia, we will also host a special session on Genomic Pathology to highlight the importance of this discipline to personalised genomic-based medicine. What are the new technologies, what is the underlying genomic architectural differences in normal populations, what are the rates and mechanisms of genomic mutations, what genes and mutations contribute to common and rare diseases, what are the functional consequences of regulatory variations and mutations, what new insights in genotype-phenotype associations can potentially render sequence analysis predictive for disease, how can we grapple with such data streams and system complexity? These questions will be discussed in depth in the beautiful back drop of Sydney, Australia.

Lastly, our current work has shown to us the importance of understanding human genomic variation. To this end, we will host an important session on the Genomics of Indigenous Populations. Engagement of indigenous representatives from the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and the South Pacific along with involved scientists will hopefully launch partnerships that may improve the understanding of our genetic relatedness as a species and uncover the range of diversity in genotype-phenotype associations.