Thirty-three years of progress: the International Workshops on Developmental Nephrology and the role of IPNA

The discipline of developmental nephrology represents the synthesis in the 1960s of advances in clinical and basic sciences. The clinical impetus was provided by the establishment of pediatric nephrology at this time, and the recognition that congenital anomalies of the kidneys and urinary tract comprise the leading causes of chronic kidney disease in children. Working together at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Henry Barnett, Chester Edelmann, and Adrian Spitzer became leaders in exploring the unique anatomic and physiologic renal adaptations required by transition from fetal to postnatal life. They presented their findings at the first meetings of the International Congress of Nephrology in the 1960s, until the establishment of the International Pediatric Nephrology Association (IPNA) in 1974. The International Workshops on Developmental Nephrology (IWDN) were established by Spitzer in New York City in 1980 and have been held every 3 years since. Thus, the 12th IWDN, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, occurred in the 33rd year of this series. Initially envisioned as a small meeting forum at which interested investigators could meet, exchange ideas, and critically evaluate recent work, its themes were renal embryogenesis, postnatal renal functional development, and renal metabolism. These workshops, initially called the International Workshops on Developmental Renal Physiology (IWDRP), are now firmly established as satellite meetings of IPNA and are held in the same year as the IPNA congresses [1]. Five of these meetings have been held in Europe, five in North America, and one each in Japan and Australia (Table 1). The first meeting was held in New York in 1980 and was dedicated to Barnett in honor of his retirement. Its success led to the continuance of IWDN as satellite meetings of IPNA congresses. The second meeting, hosted in 1983 by Matthias Brandis, was held in Marburg and followed the pattern of a small, interactive meeting. The third IWDRP was held in Tokyo in 1986 and was hosted by Takeshi Hoshi. Michel Bergeron, a developmental renal physiologist, served as local host for the fourth meeting, held on an island on the St. Laurence River near Montreal. The fifth meeting was held on Lake Como, Italy, apart from the 1992 Jerusalem meeting of IPNA, and was led by Fabio Sereni. Airlie was the venue for the sixth meeting in 1995, with Robert Chevalier presiding; the IPNA congress was in Santiago, Chile. This meeting was the first to be referred to as the International Workshop on Developmental Nephrology (IWDN). Spitzer, a distinguished developmental renal physiologist, was an organizer of the first six workshops, and he established the precedent of stressing strong scholarship and inviting first-rank scientists to speak at plenary sessions. The seventh workshop was held in Stockholm; the IPNA Congress was in London that year. For this 1998 meeting, the chairs were Anita Aperia and Gianni Celsi of Sweden. The eighth workshop, organized by Chevalier, Lisa Satlin, and Lisa Guay-Woodford, was held in Victoria, British Colombia, in 2001. Satlin chaired the ninth meeting in the Barossa Valley in 2004. In 2007, Endre Sulyak presided over the tenth meeting, in Pecs, along with Guay-Woodford. The 2010 IWDN was held in New Paltz, a bus ride up the Hudson River from the location of that year’s IPNACongress, and was organized by Norman Rosenblum and Jordan Kreidburg. The most recent meeting, held on EdinburghUniversity grounds in Dedicated to Adrian Spitzer