ESICON 2010

The 40th Annual meeting of the Endocrine Society of India (ESICON) was held at CMC from December 9th to 11th, 2010. The conference was attended by nearly 1000 delegates, and there were 25 international faculty and over 70 Indian faculty present. The scientific programme involved a judicious blend of clinical endocrinology and basic science with an attempt to explore the basics of endocrinology to perpetuate scientific inquisitiveness as well as encourage translational medical growth. The Symposia were named after a number of luminary endocrine scientists of yester-years.There were a total of 110 talks, orations and debates which composed the 20 symposia of the event and also an endocrine quiz for medical, paediatric and geriatric post graduate students.  The chief guest at the inaugural evening was Professor A Surolia, Director, National Institute of Immunology. Professor Surolia spoke about how he had discovered an insulin supra-molecule which may be given once in 6 months for the treatment of diabetes-a new pinnacle for Indian science.  Other prominent speakers included Allen Spiegel(New York) for G protein work in endocrinology, Rajesh Thakker (Oxford) for MEN-I and hyperparathyroid genetics, Bruce Robinson (Sydney) for MEN-2, Johnathan Lakey (California) and Balamurgesh Appakalai (Minnesota) for islet cell transplantation, and Ashley Grossman (London) for Neuroendocrinology.

The sustained support from CHIPS, Online and the Telemedicine Departments enabled the proceedings of the conference to be transmitted from the Bagayam Campus to other venues in the Hospital Campus, as well as to other parts of the country such as Lucknow and Kochi, and also to Pakistan. Dr Johnathan Lakey’s talk was transmitted live from California.