Journal of Clinical & Experimental Pathology
Open Access

Abstract

The course on Technology and the Future of Medicine at the University of Alberta attracts a small subset of University students from 5-14 per term. About half of the students continue on in some way with the futuristic subject matter of the course after the course ends. Both technology advocates and technology skeptics teach in the course so students are exposed to a wide range of views. Regenerative medicine and stem cell generation of organs has been one of the themes of the course since the very first focus group that helped laid its foundations in May 2011. It was natural then when the opportunity arose to define the new discipline of tissue engineering pathology to involve the students in this effort. The idea of creating a new discipline with this name was first suggested by Dr. Solez at the 2011 Banff Transplant Pathology meeting in Paris. In November 2014 six students from the course began discussing the creation of a classification for the new discipline and in March 2015 these six University of Alberta students submitted abstracts for the Pathology-2015 meeting in New Orleans on the subject of tissue engineering pathology and related subjects. Many of these abstracts were for single author youth research forum presentations. The meeting July13-15, 2015 will be the first broad based discussion of this new pathology discipline and will mark the first time a new discipline in pathology has had such a distinctive and clearly defined start.

Biography

Kim Solez, MD, FRCPC, Professor of Pathology at the University of Alberta, and President and CEO of Transpath Inc., is one of the world?s foremost kidney pathologists. He is the father of the Banff classification that sets standards worldwide for how biopsies from kidney and other solid organ transplants are interpreted, and started the post-earthquake disaster relief task force of the International Society of Nephrology. He is a popular blogger on internetevolution.com, and directs NKF cyber Nephrology, a joint venture of the National Kidney Foundation (U.S.) and the University of Alberta. He has also created many educational videos for the Lifeboat Foundation.