Dear Colleague:

The National Institutes of Health is pleased to invite you to the sixth annual symposium on the Functional Genomics of Critical Illness and Injury, to be held November 17, 2008 at the Natcher Conference Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. The symposium is being held in conjunction with the inaugural meeting of the United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group (USCIITG).

Investigators using genomic and proteomic approaches to study injury and critical illness face major challenges unique to these methods regarding resources, experimental design, and data analysis. Human studies in critically ill or injured patients have special requirements related to safety, vulnerability, and privacy, while genomic research itself raises additional ethical considerations. It is clear that multi-institutional efforts are needed to provide the organizational and investigative framework necessary to optimize resource utilization and data accrual for functional genomics studies of critical illness and injury.

The objectives of these yearly symposia are three-fold: i) offering educational presentations; ii) seeking consensus on key scientific goals; and iii) encouraging collaboration to achieve those goals. The first two symposia provided an educational forum on new high-throughput technologies, systems biology, computational biology, and bioinformatics. The third symposium reached consensus on the value of applying high-dimensional biotechnologies to the study of critically ill and injured patients. The fourth symposium addressed systems approaches to the investigation of pathophysiology and the concomitant need for establishing multidisciplinary research networks to conduct such studies. The last symposium scientific leaders within the United States critical illness and injury community discussed a strategic plan for critical illness and injury clinical research in the United States.

This symposium series is a unique opportunity for communication and collaboration among the diverse fields committed to applying lessons from functional genomics at the bedside of critically ill and injured patients. We look forward to welcoming you to Bethesda this November.

Sincerely,
The Organizing Committee

J. Perren Cobb, MD
Center for Critical Illness and Health Engineering
Washington University in St. Louis

Anthony F. Suffredini, MD
Critical Care Medicine Department
NIH Clinical Center, DHHS

Robert L. Danner, MD
Critical Care Medicine Department
NIH Clinical Center, DHHS

Peter J. Munson, PhD
Center for Information Technology
National Institutes of Health, DHHS

Scott D. Somers, PhD
National Institute of General Medical Sciences
National Institutes of Health, DHHS

Ramona Hicks, PhD
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
National Institutes of Health, DHHS

Andrea Harabin, PhD
National Heart Lung and Blood Institute
National Institutes of Health, DHHS