20th Annual Meeting of NECTAR (Network of European CNS Transplantation and Restoration)

It is our pleasure to invite you to participate in this year´s Annual Meeting of the Network of European CNS Transplantation and Restoration (NECTAR), which will take place from November 25-27 2010 in Freiburg, Germany. This year we will celebrate some anniversaries in that NECTAR was founded 20 years ago, and this year´s meeting will be the 20th.

Functional restoration in the central nervous system has during recent years attracted increased attention not only from scientists and clinicians worldwide but increasingly also from patient foundations, media and health care systems. And there are clinical trials ongoing with regard to cell replacement, neuroprotection, and gene therapy in different neurological disorders. We are therefore very pleased that the local and international organizing committees were able to again compose a programme with leading scientists and clinicians addressing key issues on experimental studies and clinical applications in the highly dynamic field of functional restoration and repair in the central nervous system. In addition, we are again awaiting very interesting oral presentations in the datablitz sessions and we are encouraging you to submit an abstract for a datablitz.

After the great success of the 19th Annual Meeting last year in Cardiff with focus on Huntington´s disease, stroke and stem cells, we will this year place the emphasis on new developments in Parkinson´s disease, atypical Parkinsonian syndromes, gene therapy and stem cells. In addition, there will be special lectures with comprehensive presentation on neuroprotection in Parkinson´s and Huntington´s disease, new therapies for stroke, and ethical issues when implementing new therapies for neurological disorders.

After organizing the NECTAR Meeting in 2006 and the International Neural Transplantation Meeting in 2008 we are again inviting you to come to Freiburg and we are very much looking forward to in depth discussions to further understand neurological disorders and improve their treatment.