Welcome to PACTALS 2021 NAGOYA

September 17-18, 2021
Aichi Medical University
Gen Sobue

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to everyone for participating in the “Pan-Asian Consortium for Treatment and Research in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (PACTALS) 2021,” International Conference for Treatment and Research in ALS.

The concept of the Pan-Asian Consortium for Treatment and Research in ALS (PACTALS) was established in December 2014 as a research consortium of ALS in the Asia-Pacific region. Since then, the PACTALS members have been eagerly working on promoting research collaborations in the region.

Following the success of the PACTALS 2018 Meeting in Seoul (President: Prof. Seung H Kim), the PACTALS 2020 Meeting was scheduled to be held in Nagoya, Japan in September 2020. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it had to be postponed, and we subsequently decided to hold it as PACTALS 2021 on the full web. While it is truly disappointing not to be able to meet together in person, we hope to take this opportunity to expand the PACTALS community.

For this reason, the participation fee was waived. We hope that everyone who participates in the PACTALS 2021 will continue to participate in the PACTALS community.

The main theme of the PACTALS 2021 is to move "Towards therapeutic development of ALS – AsiaOceania perspective." The aim is to promote the networking of clinicians, researchers, care support personnel and patient groups who face ALS together in the Asia-Oceania region. We also aim to promote collaboration in international joint registry research and clinical trials in Asia and Oceania.

In recent years, there has been very active therapeutic development for ALS in the Asia-Oceania region, and a number of clinical trials have been conducted. In addition, many advanced research and development activities, such as iPS cell drug discovery, stem cell therapy, robotic rehabilitation, and nucleic acid drug development, have been carried out. Furthermore, various clinical studies and efforts have become impressively active, such as multidisciplinary care teams, research to clarify the clinical and genetic background of ALS patients, improvement of local medical care, and efforts by patient associations. In PACTALS 2021, you can join the sessions covering these topics and participate in the discussions. We have accepted about 150 e-posters for general presentation, and oral presentation sessions of the titles selected from them will be conducted.

We hope that all participants will enjoy the sessions, discussions, and communication in the PACTALS 2021 and that it will provide a meaningful and significant experience that will contribute to future medical care, care support, and research and development for ALS. Once again, we would like to thank everyone for their great support in holding this meeting.