Message from the Organizer
It is my honor to announce the IRVA Tokyo Conference 2018 and international symposium that is going to be held on July 13th and 13th in Tokyo. This conference is the first trial of a round-table style conference in this field. The aim of the conference is to provide a platform for direct interaction among international researchers and to activate international collaboration in research projects.
HTLV-1 has been a neglected virus, however, in Japan anti-HTLV-1 campaign was initiated in 2010, which led to many activities in public health administration and research by basic scientists and clinicians. In addition, countries in South America are known to be endemic. Recently, Australia is found to be an endemic country where HTLV-1c is prevalent among the indigenous people, showing a unique pathogenetic spectrum, very high incidence of bronchiectasis.
IRVA has continuously contributed to bring together scientists, clinicians, policy makers and patients to exchange information and advance both the understanding of the infections and the diseases they cause, and the clinical management of the diseases.
To further strengthen the international collaborations and accelerate the research, some of the board members proposed to have an international research conference by the researchers and clinicians in the form of roundtable conference to summarize the current status of research fields and tasks to be addressed covering all the areas.
I hope that this trial would be successful and pave the way for further advance in the area.
Toshiki Watanabe, M.D., Ph.D.
President
IRVA
