Minutes of the Annual General Meeting of the International Society of Urological Pathology held at the New Orleans Convention Center on Sunday 12th March at 1pm.
Present: Prof. Kenneth Iczkowski (President), Prof Glen Kristiansen (President-Elect), Dr Jon Oxley (Secretary), Prof. Stephen Shen (Treasurer), and other members of the Society.
Call to order
The President, Prof. Kenneth Iczkowski called the meeting to order and welcomed the participants.
- Apologies
Apologies were received from Arno Van Leenders (European Councillor), Theo van der Kwast (Past President).
Minutes of previous meetings
The minutes of the Annual General Meeting held in LA USA on Sunday 6th March were circulated to all members and are available on the website. These were taken as read and approved (SS, JO).
- Reports
4.1: Report of the President
Kenneth Iczkowski addressed the meeting and gave an overview of last year’s achievements of the ISUP.
Council changes:
Glen Kristiansen will assume the role of President after this AGM. The President Elect election was won by Prof Liang Cheng. The N American Councillor will become Dr Michelle Downes – our thanks to Dr Sean Williamson for all his hard work in this role over the last 5 years. Dr Nancy Greenland takes on the Treasurer position from Steven Shen. Our thanks to Steve for all his hard work over the years. Dr Sara Wobker will take on the ISUP Presents Chair from Jon Oxley, who continues as Secretary.
Awards:
The David Grignon Excellence in Education Award has been awarded to Prof Mahul Amin. This wards recognises leadership in education, longstanding contributons to education and innovation. Prof Amin stood and addressed the audience and explained how honored he was to recieve this.
The Grawitz Medal for meritorious service relating to the work of the Society, has been awarded to Prof Theo van der Kwast, who has continued David Grignon’s work in restoring ISUP.
The Excellence in Urological Pathology Trainee Research Awards were presented to:
Yaileen Guzman-Arocho for ”Rapid Examination of non-processed renal tissue by nonlinear microscopy: benign renal parenchyma and tumors”
Kotaro Takeda for ”BAP1 is the most common disrupted gene in VHL-mutation negative advanced clear cell renal cel carcinoma”
Yang Zong for ”Molecular Diversity of testicular embryonic-type neuroectodermal tumors (ENT; former PNET) arising from Germ cell tumors”
The committee thanks Debra Zynger and the Excellence committee for selecting these.
ISUP Travel Stipends were awarded to:
Rose Sneha George (Albany); Joao Pedro da Silava Machado Lobo, (Portugal); Swati Bhardwaj (Mt. Sinai).
Our thanks to Steven Smith for chairing this committee.
Future meetings:
- Consensus Conference on the Best Practice Recommendations on the Pathology of Urachal Neoplasms and Glandular Lesions of the Urinary Bladder. On 8th September 2023 – preceding the ESP in Dublin. Organising chairs are Gladell P. Paner and Henning Reis.
- Consensus Conference on Sex Cord Stromal Tumors. Held at USCAP 2024. A joint GUPS and ISUP meeting organised by Prof Dan Berney and Dr Andreas Acosta.
4.2: Report of the Secretary
Membership continues to grow and there is continued support for ISUP Presents. Paying membership was 358 members.
We are planning to move to a new membership system to enable automatic reminders to pay subscription as this has been highlighted as an issue during the recent elections.
4.3 Report of the Treasurer
Steven Shen presented the Treasurer’s report. The Society currently has funds of $72,431.27. Anticipated expenses for 2023 is the stipends awards, Zoom registration fees. Last years expenses included ISUP website membership – $2265, ISUP reception at Basel $1646.62, ISUP Stipend Award $2000, Zoom $895.34, Medal production $133.44 – total was $6940.40. The fees for tax filing estimated at $800 and there maybe a penalty for missing tax deadline.
This coming year will be focused on the review of membership status and dues status.
5 Future Plans:
Prof Glen Kristiansen addressed the audience with his plans as he takes on the role of President of ISUP. He explained that according to chatGPT, ”the future of GU pathology was bright”, a position he shared and pointed out that the main goal of his presidency was to promote continuity of all activities that have made ISUP successful in the past. Among these are consensus conferences (as outlined earlier by the president) and continuous education that is provided by the lecture series ”ISUP presents” and the Image Base, which is a unique platform for self-learning. Concerning consensus statements, he cautioned that better coordination with our sister society GUPS should help to minimize divergent recommendations, which not only unnecessarily puzzle our clinical partners, but may also harm the reputation of histopathology in general. As a possible topic for Consensus Conference in 2025 he suggested to consider staging and handling of prostatectomy specimens, which had been looked at in 2009 for the last time. Alternatively, the application of AI in GU pathology would be a timely topic.
Image Base can even be expanded further by the introduction of self-testing with the option to obtain certificates for the successful, which is to be established in the next two years. He explained with impressive examples how widely the estimations in Gleason grading can vary even among board certified pathologists. Therefore, the option to match ones histological diagnoses with expert rated consensus cases will be a powerful tool to further minimize interobserver variability. He ended his vision statement by kindly thanking his major influences, naming Manfred Dietel (Berlin), Holger Moch (Zurich), Jonathan Epstein (Baltimore), Mahul Amin (Los Angeles) and Lars Egevad (Stockholm).
Adjournment
The meeting adjourned at 1.35 p.m
Confirmed April 10, 2023
…………
…………………………………………
President Date