The BRIC-GARN Meeting 2011: of mice and men

The other Hilton guests thinking about mice were attending the BRIC-GARN Meeting 2011. This outstanding international congress, organized by Professor Kusuki Nishioka, Director and Chairman, Institute of Medical Science, Tokyo, encompassed both the Bio-Rheumatology International Congress (BRIC) and the ninth Global Arthritis Research Network (GARN) meeting. The GARN meeting brings together investigators from around the world to discuss the pathogenesis and treatment of inflammatory arthritis. For these people, the mice uppermost in the mind were of the knockout and transgenic kind. Indeed, one of the highlights of the meeting was a presentation on slickly engineered rodents whose cells glowed neon-bright to track the peregrinations of an overexpressed fluorescent protein construct.Among tissues featured at the meeting, bone received significant attention - especially with regard to the interface with the immune system. Indeed, bone - often viewed as an inert, albeit durable and hard, scaffold for the body construction - is intensively dynamic as osteoclasts and osteoblasts engage in relentless surface remodeling. In this lively cellular pas de deux, RANK-RANKL interactions are at the center of action. As therapies targeting RANKL enter practice, questions will abound on the consequences of its inhibition, not only for the bone itself but for the immune cells that also utilize this system. Indeed, as described by Professor Yongwon Choi from University of Pennsylvania in his study on a molecule called OSCAR, osteoclasts and osteoclasts have many similarities to T cells and antigen-presenting cells; bone cells are homebodies, however, whereas immune cells are wanderers.Another cell in the spotlight at the meeting was the fibroblast. As shown in studies by Professor Steffen Gay from Zurich, synovial fibroblasts play a key role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), with an invasive and destructive phenotype bearing the hallmark of epigenetic modification. The