Invitation to Participate

The ASCIA ASM will be held from Friday 10 October - Sunday 12 October 2003 at the Sheraton Towers Hotel, Southbank (note the time change due to the AFL Grand Final in Melbourne), with a one-day satellite meeting at the Sebel Lodge Yarra Valley on Monday October 13 2003.

Themes of the 2003 Conference are food allergy, the origins of the atopic state, autoimmunity and diagnostic testing in immunology, and immunotherapy for allergic diseases.

The conference this year will be held in association with the Diagnostic Immunology Discussion Group (DIDG), many of whom are members of ASCIA, so the common interests are obvious.

The venue for the 2003 Satellite Meeting, the Sebel Lodge Hotel, is located within an hour of Melbourne's City Centre in the famous Victorian wine-growing region, the Yarra Valley. The Hotel boasts excellent accommodation, conference facilities and a Jack Nicklaus designed 18-hole golf course. The satellite meeting will consist of 2 streams. There will be an auto-immunity stream known as "St George in the Yarra Valley" which will be in association with the DIDG and focus on diagnostic testing in immunology. The other concurrent stream will be "Current concepts in allergen immunotherapy" which will look at scientific and clinical aspects of immunotherapy in the 21^st century, with input (among others) from both Hugh Sampson and Hans Joergen Malling.

In keeping with previous years, the social program is an important and enjoyable part of the meeting. The conference dinner will be held at the Melbourne Aquarium with an address by Professor Suzanne Cory of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute.

On behalf of the organising committee, I am excited to be welcoming members of ASCIA to the ASM in Melbourne and hope it will be an outstanding conference with enough breadth to satisfy the diversity of interests among the ASCIA membership.