Mendel Symposium: Genes and the heart: August 26 to 29, 2003 Brno, Czech Republic

The idea to organize a specialized conference on genetic aspects of cardiovascular diseases was conceived one evening in summer 2002, during the satellite symposium of the European Congress of the International Society of Heart Research in Stara Lesna, Slovakia. The intention was to organize a small but qualitatively distinguished meeting at an exceptional venue, Brno, the city where JG Mendel did his experiments and arrived at the principal laws of heredity some 140 years ago. Fortunately, we were able to inform the initiators, the representatives of the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences (IACS), NS Dhalla, M Nagano and N Alpert, that the St Thomas Abbey, the very birthplace of genetics, had been reconstructed and a part of it is now the Mendel Conference Center, which is perfectly suited for the above plan. The report was enthusiastically received and we were asked to organize next year’s meeting under the heading “Genes and the Heart”. The symposium, sponsored chiefly by the Japan Heart Foundation, took place under the auspices of IACS, Masaryk University and the city of Brno in the Mendel Conference Centre. The original refectory of the abbey served as the lecture hall. Nearly 60 active participants from all over the world gathered to present two introductory lectures on JG Mendel and genetics in the twenty-first century, and 30 invited lectures covering six areas of interest: evolution and development, ischemic heart disease, arrhythmias, hypertension, cardiomyopathy, and heart hypertrophy and failure. This issue of Experimental and Clinical Cardiology provides a sample of the lecture material. Undoubtedly, the presentations and documentation met the highest standards. The participants also had the opportunity to visit the unique exhibition of Mendel’s discoveries in the neighbouring halls. We were assured that the Symposium was a complete success, both scientifically and socially, and it would be appropriate to think about a regular biannual encore. We are happy that our wish and hope declared in the First Announcement of the conference, namely “to present and discuss the results of contemporary genetics in the genuine atmosphere of its father founder”, was observed.