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Thursday October 22, 2009, MaRS Auditorium

8:30 - 9:00 am Registration
9:00 – 9:05 am Opening remarks
Cheryl Arrowsmith (Chief Scientist, SGC Toronto)
9:05 – 10:35 am Session 1: “Chromatin Signaling Mechanisms and Gene Expression”
Chair: Peter Cheung
(Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, Canada)
9:05 am Brad Cairns (Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, Utah, USA)
Germline Chromatin: Concepts Shared Between Germ Cells and ES Cells
9:35 am Jerry Workman (Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO, USA)
The ATAC Histone Acetyltransferase Complex Signals for the Inhibition of the MAP Kinase Cascade Through its MoaE Subunit
10:05 am Robert Martienssen (Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA)
Copying and Reprogramming of Heterochromatin with RNAi
10:35 am Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:30 pm Session 2: "Environmental Modulation of Epigenetic States I"
Chair: Tim Willson
(GSK, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA)
11:00 am Arturas Petronis (CAMH, Toronto, Canada)
Epigenetics of Major Psychosis
11:30 am Ian Adcock (Imperial College London, UK)
Chromatin Biology, Inflammation and Lung Disease
Watch Video [part 1]  [part 2]  [part 3]
12:00 am Paolo Sassone-Corsi (University of California, Irvine, CA, USA)
Epigenetics and Metabolism: the Circadian Clock Connection
Watch Video [part 1]  [part 2]  [part 3]  [part 4]
12:30 pm Lunch
2:00 – 4:00 pm Session 3: "Environmental Modulation of Epigenetic States II"
Chair: Udo Oppermann
(SGC Oxford, Oxford, UK)
2:00 pm Gioacchino Natoli (European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy)
The Epigenome and the Transcriptional Control of Innate Immunity and Inflammation
2:30 pm Vincenzo Pirrotta (Rutgers University, NJ, USA)
Polycomb Targets and Alternative Chromatin States
3:00 pm Michael Meaney (McGill University, Montreal, Canada)
Epigenetic Programming of Behavior and Physiology
3:30 pm Rama Natarajan (City of Hope, Duarte, CA, USA)
Epigenetic Mechanisms Underlying Inflammatory Gene Expression Under Diabetic Conditions
4:00 pm Break and Poster Set up
4:30 - 6:00 pm Poster Session & Wine and Cheese Reception

Friday October 23, 2009, MaRS Auditorium

9:00 – 10:30 pm Session 4: “Signaling Mechanisms in Chromatin Biology”
Chair: Jinrong Min
(SGC Toronto, Toronto, Canada)
9:00 am Xiaodong Cheng (Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA)
Epigenetic Link Between DNA Methylation and Histone Modifications
9:30 am Mark Bedford (M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Texas, USA)
TDR3 is an Effector Molecule for CARM-Generated Methyl Motifs
10:00 pm Xiang-Jiao Yang (Goodman Cancer Centre, McGill University, Montreal, Canada)
Different Regulatory Mechanisms for Histone Acetyltransferases and Deacetylases
10:30 am Coffee break
11:00 – 12:30 pm Session 5: "Epigenetic Mechanisms in Development and Disease"
Chair: Gordon Keller
(Ontario Cancer Institute, Toronto, Canada)
11:00 am Bing Ren (University of California, San Diego, CA, USA)
Epigenomic Landscapes of Pluripotent and Lineage-Committed Human Cells
11:30 am Antoine Peters (Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland)
Transgenerational Epigenetic Control of Early Mouse Development
12:00 pm Christopher Wynder (McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute, Hamilton, Canada)
Regulation of H3K4 Demethylation Controls Neural Differentiation; a Molecular Investigation of Complex Neuro-Developmental Disorders
12:30-2:00 pm Lunch
2:00 – 4:30 pm Session 6: "Harnessing the Epigenome for Therapy: Target Validation and Biomarkers"
Chair: Chas Bountra
(SGC Oxford, Oxford, UK)
2:00 pm Sam Aparicio (BC Cancer Research Centre, Vancouver, BC, Canada)
MLL5 Function in Hematopoeisis and Leukemia; Implications for Therapy
2:30 pm Victoria Richon (Epizyme Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA)
Targeting Histone Deacetylases: Development of Vorinostat for the Treatment of Cancer
3:00 pm Stephen Frye (Lineberger Cancer Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA)
Promoting Illiteracy in Epigenetics: Antagonists of the Readers of the Epigenetic Code
3:30 pm Shohei Koide (University of Chicago, IL, USA)
Synthetic Binding Proteins: New Tools for Epigenetics
4:00 pm Speaker to be Determined
4:30 pm Concluding remarks
* Talk titles in Italics are subject to change