J. Westwick - Böcker

The first symposium in this series was held at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in December 1988 and was entitled "Novel Neutrophil Stimulating Peptides". That symposium successfully brought together the majority of laboratories working in the area of interleukin-8 and related peptides; see Immunology Today 10: 146-147 (1989). The Second International Symposium on Chemotactic Cytokines was held at the same venue in June 1990, and a much-increased attendance reflected the accelerating pace of work in the area of these chemotactic cytokines. The proceedings of that meeting were published in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol. 305 (1991). The rapid advances made in the field of chemotactic cytokines over the last 18 months necessitated a third Symposium in this series to collate and place in perspective an explosion of new data. The Third International Symposium on Chemotactic Cytokines was held between August 31 and September 1, 1992 in Baden-bei-Wien, Austria. However, the lack of a clear nomenclature system was creating some confusion in the area, especially as new factors continue to be discovered and classified as family members. In the past, these inflammatory mediators had been placed arbitrarily under the broad heading of "intercrines" or "chemotactic cytokines" with no clear classification guidelines to follow. This nomenclature issue was addressed at the Symposium, where investigators in the field were invited to reach a consensus regarding a collective name for these mediators. The resulting decision was to identify the major family as chemokines, to replace all previous terms.

Since its inception the research area of platelet pharmacology has always been a vigorous one and it is a characteristic that new approaches to the understanding of platelet function are rapidly and thoroughly investigated. The intensity of this activity is attri­ butable, probably, to an appreciation by research workers in the field that a satisfactory therapeutic control of platelet function has yet to be realized. Also that if and when this problem of con­ trolling platelet function is achieved the benefits to clinical medicine will be immense since platelets are known to be involved in a multiplicity of events coupled within the haemostatic mechanisms and inflammatory responses. Aberrations in the behaviour of plate­ lets is part of the aetiology of atherosclerosis, myocardial and cerebral infarction and thrombosis. At this point in time, research in platelet function is in a particularly rapid state of flux. The recent findings of research workers active in the field and also workers investigating mechan­ isms of stimulus response coupling in other cells, have provided interesting insights into the generality of mechanisms involved in the function of responsive cells. One may itemize these developments as the area of cell receptor/ligand interaction, induction of cell­ ular response by protein phosphorylation and calcium flux. The mech­ anism of these latter events occurs through the activity of phospho­ lipase generating transient intermediates. These intermediates may act as ionophores or enzyme activators or may, in the case of eico­ sanoids, reinforce and make irreversible the cellular response.