Clinical trials in neuroprotection. 23-25 January 2003, Key Biscayne, FL, USA

The basis for this meeting ras the fact that many neurological and psychiatric disorders are accompanied by neuronal loss, either acutely or chronically. Furthermore, many of the underlying mechanisms of neural tissue damage are similar across a wide variety of neurodegenerative conditions, including stroke, central nervous system damage secondary to cardiac surgery,epilepsy, traumatic brain and spinal cord injury, Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and even some psychiatric diseases. Despite a large number of animal studies with promising neuroprotective agents, no successful strategy for neuroprotection from any of these conditions has been successfully demonstrated. The aim of the meeting was to review the current status of neuroprotection and provide new ideas on how to get further in research, preclinical and clinical study designs, and perhaps to generate 'out of the box' ideas for future progress by bringing together experts from different fields of neuroprotection.