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Overview

Mission

The Asia Pacific Protein Association (APPA) was founded to advance protein science in countries in the Asia Pacific region. APPA organizes a triennial International Conference that provides an international forum to promote communication, cooperation and collaboration in all aspects of protein science.

Origin, Current, and Future

The first conference for this purpose of advancing protein science in Asia Pacific countries was held in Yokohama, Japan on April 14-18, 2004, with Prof. Tairo Ohshima as a Chair Person. The title of the conference was “the 1st Pacific-Rim International Conference on Protein Science (PRICPS2004)”. The conference was organized by the Protein Science Society of Japan (PSSJ) in collaboration with both the Science Council of Japan and the Protein Society. Main theme was “New Approaches to Structure and Function of Proteins in Pacific-Rim”. The conference aimed at highlighting the current main-stream topics in protein science and also searching for the new direction in the era of post-genome sequencing. The conference included 3 plenary lectures, 6 symposiums and 15 workshops. The total number of presentations was 589. Young researchers had the opportunity to listen to lectures by world-famous researchers on subjects ranging from structure to function, from new experimental methodology to theoretical calculations, and from physicochemistry to the physiology of proteins. The conference contributed tremendously to the further development of protein science in pacific-rim countries, especially far eastern countries.

With the great success of the first conference, the organizers form different countries agreed to continue this exciting activity every four years. On June 22-28, 2008, the second PRICPS conference was held at Cairns Australia with Richard J Simpson as a Chair Person. The conference was organized as Joint 4th Asian and Oceania Human Proteome Organisation Congress (AOHUPO) and 2nd Pacific-Rim International Conference on Protein Science (PRICPS).This joint AOHUPO/PRICPS conference in Cairns aimed to contribute to the further development of protein science in the Pacific-Rim region. The conference included 3 plenary lectures and 10 symposiums with 100 oral presentations and 200 poster presentations.

These two conferences at Yokohama and Cairns proposed several key ideas to advance the activity. During the conference at Cairns in June 2008, the Organizing Committee Members and several participants from different countries including the Executive Councils of the Protein Society discussed the future of the conference. Major points agreed are as follows.

  1. PRICPS should be reorganized into APPA focusing more on the Asian countries.
  2. To keep the activity, the office of APPA will be placed in the office of PSSJ.
  3. The main activity of APPA at this moment is to organize the International Conference, providing international forums to promote communication, cooperation and collaboration in various aspects of protein science. Considering the rapid progress of science and technology, in particular protein science, the term of every four years is too long to keep up with the progress. The conference in every three years will be appropriate.
  4. The 3rd Symposium of APPA will be held on May 6-9, 2011 at Shanghai. Professor Chihchen (Zhizhen) Wang, the president of the Chinese Protein Society, will serve as the President of the Organizing Committee.
  5. The Steering Committee should be organized to support the activity of APPA. Possibly, each participating country has two Committee members. At this moment, we have 15 Committee members from 8 countries. We should invite more countries to join the APPA.
  6. Although the interaction and collaboration among Asian Pacific countries are our major targets, the cooperation and collaboration with the Protein Society are also essential to achieve our aims and also to contribute to advancing protein science of the world.

Again, at this era experiencing rapid and extra-ordinal advances in science and technology and moreover tremendous globalization of the world, communication and collaboration among Asian Pacific countries located close to each other are becoming more and more important. The APPA aims at supporting and accelerating such cooperation and collaboration.

Provisional Steering Committee of APPA (June, 2010)