Welcome

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We are pleased to welcome you to the 18th International Workshop on the Enzymology and Molecular Biology of Carbonyl Metabolism, often referred to as the “Carbonyl Meeting”. The workshop will be held in Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Costa Brava, Spain), near Barcelona, from July 12 through July 17, 2016. Registration, scientific sessions, poster exhibition, lunch, dinner, coffee breaks, welcome reception, etc., will take place directly in the Hotel Eden Roc.
Henry Weiner and his wife Esther organized this meeting for many years with an outstanding success. Their vision and legacy has made scientists from all over the world convene bi-annually, alternating between a US and an overseas venue. The workshop took place for the first time in Bern (Switzerland), in 1982, and the last meeting was held in Pennsylvania, in 2014.

The scientific focus of the meeting is on enzyme superfamilies involved in the metabolism and detoxification of carbonyl containing substrates: alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH) and other medium-chain dehydrogenases/reductases (MDR), aldehyde dehydrogenases (ALDH), short-chain dehydrogenases/reductases (SDR), and aldo-keto reductases (AKR). These enzymes elicit an enormous interest within the biomedical field, in areas such as alcohol abuse and alcoholism, hormone metabolism, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and stem cell biology. Other areas of interest are animal models of disease, bioinformatics, expression profiling, functional genomics, metabolomics and proteomics.

Senior scientists from each group are invited to deliver an oral presentation. There will be poster sessions where students and postdoctoral investigators can present their work. Some posters will be selected for short talks. This scheme may change depending on the number of participants that register for each session. All presenters will be invited to submit a manuscript that will be reviewed for publication. Elsevier will publish our articles as a special edition of Chemico-Biological Interactions.

This is a unique conference bringing top investigators in these fields together. In the spirit of the meeting founders, past conferences have been unique in creating a friendly, relaxing and scientifically exciting atmosphere. The Carbonyl Meeting is very informal, wisely combining excellent science and good social times. As a result, over half the participants have established longstanding collaborations and generated join publications.

Once again, we ask for your assistance in identifying new investigators to invite to the meeting.
The conference venue and its natural surroundings offer many leisure activities for the participants and their accompanying persons.
We will do our best to ensure that this meeting is an enjoyable experience for everyone.
We look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones. We hope you will join us in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, this coming July.