microRNAs are playing an important role in a range of diseases such as cancer, metabolic diseases and cardiovascular disorders. Their involvement in many physiological pathways, makes them an excellent target for pharmaceutical drug development and their use as biomarkers or for profiling and screening turns them into a valuable tool for diagnostics. This conference highlights the latest developments in using miRNA's for health and disease, the novel applications and progress made in manipulating microRNA, and the opportunities for using microRNA as a tool.

20+ SCIENTIFIC PRESENTATIONS COVERING: 

• Therapeutic Potential in Inflammation, Cancer and Pain
• New Technological Strategies
• microRNAs as Biomarkers and in Diagnostics
• Tissue-Based Analysis
• Circulating miRNAs

SHORT COURSE: 

Sunday, March 3
2:00 - 5:00 pm Computational Aspects of microRNA 

Computational Analysis of Noncoding RNA

Stefan Washietl, Ph.D., Scientist, Computational Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Using a Bioinformatics Resource Manager

Susan C. Tilton, Ph.D., Scientist, Computational Biology & Bioinformatics, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

BioVLAB-MMIA: a Cloud Environment for microRNA and mRNA Integrated Analysis (MMIA) on Amazon EC2

Hyungro Lee, Ph.D., Pervasive Technology Institute, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University

AGENDA HIGHLIGHTS: 

microRNAs in Diagnostics and Targeting Rheumatic Disease

Steffen Gay, M.D., Professor, Experimental Rheumatology, University of Zurich

Causes and Consequences of microRNA Dysregulation in Cancer

Carlo M. Croce, M.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics; Director, Institute of Genetics,Ohio State University

Pre-Clinical Development of a Tumor Suppressor miRNA

David Brown, Ph.D., Director, Research, Mirna Therapeutics

microRNAs: Novel Target Class for Small Molecule Drug Discovery?

Pramod Pandey, Ph.D., Senior Research Investigator, Center for Proteomic Chemistry, Integrated Lead Discovery, Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research, Inc.

Circulating miRNAs as Biomarkers: How Far Have We Made It?

Igor Mikaelian, M.D., D.V.M., MSc, DACVP, Research Leader, Hoffman-La Roche, Inc.

Extracting Contextual microRNA Information for Cancer Diagnostics

Lorenzo F. Sempere, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth