John B. Lombardini - Böcker

This volume is the selected, edited proceedings of the International Taurine Sympo- th sium held in Tucson, Arizona, in July 1997. The meeting was a satellite symposium ofthe 16 Biennial Meeting of the International Society for Neurochemistry, which was held in Boston immediately following the Tucson meeting. In view of the desert location of Tucson, the meeting was advertised tongue-in-cheek as being the hottest scientific meeting ever. As the weather lived up to its billing, the Symposium may well have earned the title. The meeting was held in an atmospheric cluster of adobe buildings, old by the stan- dards of the American southwest, at the Westward Look Resort in the Sonoran Desert foot- hills of Tucson, which is overlooked by the 9000' high Santa Catalina mountains. As is the norm for taurine symposia, participants formed a multinational group, with representatives from China, Korea, Japan, United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Ireland, England, Spain, Italy, Finland, France, Denmark, Germany, Norway and Armenia.The meeting was organized around plenary lectures by Russell Chesney (University of Tennessee: Taurine and infant nutrition), Herminia Pasantes-Morales (National Autono- mous University of Mexico: Taurine: An osmolyte in mammalian tissues) and Kinya Kuri- yama (Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine: Interrelationship between taurine and GABA).

What is the physiological, pharmacological, nutritional, and pathological role of taurine? This volume is part of the mini series of Taurine Symposia proceedings. It is entitled "Taurine - Significance for the 21st Century", and was held from September 20-23, 2002, in Kauai, Hawaii and discusses the role and actions of taurine and attempts to answer this central question.

The first Taurine Symposium organized by Dr. Ryan Huxtable and the late Dr. Andre Barbeau was held in Tucson, Arizona, in 1975. Since that auspici­ ous event, nine international symposia on the role of taurine in biology have taken place. The locations for these meetings have been Tucson (two times), Rome, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Vancouver, Mexico City, Helsinki, and Florence. In 1977, due to the large number of scientists in Japan who were interested in the role of this unique amino acid in biological systems, we organized the Japanese Research Society on Sulfur Amino Acids with the encouragement and financial assistance of the Taisho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (Tokyo). Annual meetings have been held, and the membership has expanded from 78 to 414 in 1987; the number of presentations has increased during this time span from 29 to 74. The symposium in Tokyo in 1982, "Sulfur Amino Acids, Biochemical and Clinical Aspects" [1], was held to celebrate the 5th Annual Meeting of our Society. I would like to emphasize that in Japan we have an active Research Society especially directed to the study of sulfur amino acids. We have published our own semi-annual journal entitled Sulfur Amino Acids. Our society is an inter­ disciplinary research society since taurine is a highly diversified compound that interconnects physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, nutrition, and medicine. One exciting fringe benefit of taurine research and the society has been the fostering of contacts with distinguished scientists from many varied medical fields.

The first Taurine Symposium organized by Dr. Ryan Huxtable and the late Dr. Andre Barbeau was held in Tucson, Arizona, in 1975. Since that auspici­ ous event, nine international symposia on the role of taurine in biology have taken place. The locations for these meetings have been Tucson (two times), Rome, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Vancouver, Mexico City, Helsinki, and Florence. In 1977, due to the large number of scientists in Japan who were interested in the role of this unique amino acid in biological systems, we organized the Japanese Research Society on Sulfur Amino Acids with the encouragement and financial assistance of the Taisho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd (Tokyo). Annual meetings have been held, and the membership has expanded from 78 to 414 in 1987; the number of presentations has increased during this time span from 29 to 74. The symposium in Tokyo in 1982, "Sulfur Amino Acids, Biochemical and Clinical Aspects" [1], was held to celebrate the 5th Annual Meeting of our Society. I would like to emphasize that in Japan we have an active Research Society especially directed to the study of sulfur amino acids. We have published our own semi-annual journal entitled Sulfur Amino Acids. Our society is an inter­ disciplinary research society since taurine is a highly diversified compound that interconnects physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, nutrition, and medicine. One exciting fringe benefit of taurine research and the society has been the fostering of contacts with distinguished scientists from many varied medical fields.

The Taurine Symposium- "Taurine: Beginning the 21'' Century"- was held September 20-23, 2002, on the beautiful island of Kauai in Hawaii. The headquarters of the meeting was the Radisson Kauai Beach Resort. This international meeting was attending by approximately 80 individuals from 23 nations and 4 continents. Seventy-five papers were presented either as platform presentations or poster presentations. Taurine, first isolated from ox bile in 1827 by Tiedemann and Gmelin and named in 1838 by Demarcay, became of significant scientific interest in 1968 when the first extensive review article was published by Jacobsen and Smith. Interest in taurine grew exponentially after 1975 when the first taurine symposium was organized by Ryan Huxtable in Tucson, Arizona. Since that date, taurine symposia have been held approximately every two years held in various cities and resort areas around the world. Taurine investigators have had the privilege of attending these scientific meetings on three continents - Asia, Europe, and North America. Since the initial meeting in 1975, a central question addressed during many of the symposia has been: "What is physiological, pharmacological, nutritional, and pathological role of taurine?". Although taurine has been established as an important osmolyte, it appears to affect many other biological processes. However, the exact mechanism(s) by "which taurine acts" has not yet been definitively answered. In Kauai, the patticipants discussed many topics and asked many questions regarding the role and actions of taurine.

The underlying philosophy of these two symposia on taurine remains the same as all those that have been held previously: the best way to remain current in the subject matter is to talk directly with the investigators at the forefront of the field. Thus, we brought together some 50 individuals from 11 different countries who have keen interests and active research programs in the many-faceted areas of taurine research. The meetings were held on October 8-10, 1991, in an elegant setting in a resort area at Orange Beach, Alabama, approximately 50 miles outside of Mobile on the Gulf Coast. The meetings were programmed as two separate Symposia held sequentially. The first symposia on October 8 was devoted exclusively to taurine research in the cat, primarily in the area of nutrition, and entitled "The Waltham Symposium on Taurine and Cat Nutrition". The second symposia on October 9 and 10 was open to all fields of taurine research and was entitled "International Taurine Symposium: New Dimensions on its Mechanisms of Actions". If the philosophy of these meetings was to bring both experts and novices together in a discussion and presentation of current taurine research, then the major purpose of the Proceedings is to document the current research efforts and to present an objective summary of where the taurine field stands today and where the focus will be in the future.