Geoffrey M.H.Waites*

Editorial Note: The Executive Council members of the Asian Society of Andrology, the Editorial Board members of the Asian Journal of Andrology and the Organizing Committee members of the Forum available on 16 October 2002 held a joint meeting to select scientists who had made distinguished contributions to andrology, especially for their work for Asia's development and its achievements in this field. Four scientists were nominated: Professor Arif Adimoelja (Indonesia), Professor David J Handelsman (Australia), Professor Geoffrey MH Waites (UK) and Professor Jie-Ping WU (China). The decision was announced at the Opening Ceremony of the Forum. A special award (a statue of a horse treading on a swallow and a Certificate) for Distinguished Contribution to Andrology was presented to each of them at the Ceremony by Professor Shao-Zhen QIAN, President of the Asian Society of Andrology. The horse has a dual meaning, as 2002 is the Chinese Year of Horse and the horse signifies taking the lead. It derives momentum with the help of a flying swallow (photo below). The original dates in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.) and was excavated in 1969 at Laitai, Gansu Province.

The Scientific Committee, Chaired by Professor David Handelsman (Australia), put together a programme covering all aspects of andrology, comprising 5 Plenary Lectures, 12 Symposia, 11 Oral Sessions and Poster presentations and, in addition, two half-day workshops.

The Workshops: The first was on Vasectomy, conducted by TB Hargreave (UK) and Shun-Qiang LI and Xiao-Zhang LIU (China) and the second on Semen Analysis according to WHO criteria, conducted by HWG Baker and DY Liu (Australia) and A Hinting (Indonesia). Both workshops were well attended with animated discussions. Surgeons in the Vasectomy workshop were given copies of the WHO-AVSC-sponsored training video on non-scalpel vasectomy made by Dr Shun-Qiang LI (China); copies of the Chinese translation of the 4th Edition of the WHO semen manual were given to participants in the Semen Analysis workshop.

The Plenary Lectures covered the following topics:

Cloning and stem cell technology (P Mountford, Australia);

Male reproductive health in the Asia-Pacific region (Yi-Fei WANG, China);

The present and future of androgen therapy (DJ Handelsman, Australia);

Progress and prospects for male contraception (C Wang, USA);

The ageing male in the 21st century (FCW Wu, UK).

Each Symposium was convened by one or two acknowledged experts in the field who, in some cases, helped to fund the participation of the selected speakers.

Symposium 1: Spermatogenesis, with the following topics:

Hormonal regulation in spermatogenesis (R McLach-lan, Australia);

Restoration of spermatogenesis and fertility in azoospermic mutant mice by suppression and re-elevation of testosterone followed by ICSI (A Okuyama, Japan);

Germ cells and genetic regulation of spermatogenesis (Y Nishimune, Japan).

Symposium 2: Male Sexual Dysfunction, with the following topics:

The physiology of erection (TB Hargreave, UK);

Cardiovascular disease and erectile dysfunction (D Quek, Malaysia);

Oral medications for treatment of erectile dysfunction (MK Li, Singapore).

Symposium 3: Reproductive Infections, with the following topics:

Epidemiology of reproductive tract infection in Japan (Y Kumamoto, Japan);

AIDS prevention in Thailand (W Rojanapithayakorn, Thailand);

Public health and epidemiology of HIV/AIDS in China (Lai-Yi KANG, China).

Symposium 4: Male Ageing, with the following topics:

Androgens and cardiovascular disease (FC W Wu, UK);

Androgens and body composition in male ageing (PY Liu, Australia);

Androgen and bone mass in ageing men (Annie Kung, Hong Kong, China).

Symposium 5: Prostate Diseases, with the following topics:

Epidemiology of benign prostatic hypertrophy and prostatic cancer (S Kim, Korea);

Ligand-independent activation of andorgen Receptor by interleukin-6 in prostate cancer cells (Haruo Ito, Japan);

Targeted disruption of mouse prosaposin gene affects prostate development and inactivates MAPK pathway (Carlos R. Morales, Canada).

Symposium 6: Evidence-based Traditional Medicine, with the following topics:

Phytochemicals in management of sexual concerns (PG Adaikan, Singapore);

Isoflavone (Phytogen?/FONT>) in treatment of male climacteric and prostatism Han-Sun CHIANG, Taipei);

Use of phyto-compounds in cancer chemoprevention (Victor HH Goh, Singapore);

The use of Tribulus terrestris L extracts in androgen deficiency in the ageing Male (ADAM) with sexual fatigue (Arif Adimoelja, Indonesia).

Symposium 7: Epididymis, with the following topics:

Epididymal Lipocalins: Structure and function (Marie-Claire Orgebin-Crist, France);

Role of testicular growth factors as mediators of epididymal gene expression (Barry Hinton, USA);

Studies on sperm maturation related epididymis-specific programmatically expressed genes in monkey and rat (Yong-Lian ZHANG, China);

Vascular growth factor expression in the rat epididymis (CL Au, Hong Kong, China);

Transgenic techniques in search for novel strategies for male contraception (Ilpo Huhtaniemi, Finland).

Symposium 8: Male Contraception, with the following topics:

Androgens alone for hormonal male contraception (YQ Gu, China);

Androgen/progestin combination regimens for male contraception (D Handelsman, Australia);

Vas based fertility control (S Guha, India);

Recent research on vasectomy techniques (D Sokal, USA).

Symposium 9: Population Variation in Male Reproduction, with the following topics:

Ethnic variation in hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular regulation of male fertility (R Swerdloff, USA);

Spermatogenesis and testicular weight in Japanese men (C Mori, Japan);

Genetic disorder of the patients with male infertility in Taiwan (Han-Sun CHIANG, Taipei).

Symposium 10: Sperm Structure and Function, with the following topics:

Importance of zona pellucida-induced acrosome reaction in assisted reproduction (Daniel Franken, South Africa);

Impact of different sperm functions on fertilization and pregnancy (including DNA fragmentation) (Ralf Henkel, Germany)

Oocyte penetration and fusion (Y Takahashi, Japan);

Relationship between sperm pathology and ICSI/IVF outcome (H Chemes, Argentina).

Symposium 11: ICSI/IVF for Male Infertility, with the following topics:

Clinical evaluation and assessment for ICSI (Gordon Baker, Australia);

Evaluation and assessment of semen for IVF/ICSI (De Yi Liu, Australia);

Results of intracytoplasmic sperm injection (Aucky Hinting, Indonesia);

ICSI - New understanding of an old method (SC Ng, Singapore).

Symposium 12: Androgen Action, with the following topics:

Androgen receptor-structure/function correlations (EL Yong, Singapore);

Three-dimensional imaging study of androgen receptor and co-regulators (Ryoichi Takayanagi, Japan).

In addition, there were 2 Satellite Symposia, one organized by the Asian Council for the Study of Aging Male (ACSAM) and the other by Organon.

ACSAM Satellite Symposium, with the following topics:

Prevalence of ADAM in Asia (Han Sun CHIANG, Taipei);

Asian guidelines for the management of ADAM (Young Chan KIM, Korea);

Singapore epidemiological data and protocol for ACSAM study on ageing male in Asia (Victor HH Goh, Singapore).

Organon Satellite Symposium, with the following topics:

Androgen deficiency and its treatment in the ageing male (L Gooren, the Netherlands);

Characteristics of Andriol Testocaps, a new oral TU formulation for treatment of testosterone deficiency (H Rekers, the Netherlands).

Oral Presentations were given in 11 sessions under the following headings:

Androgens, Testis, Epididymis, Spermatozoa, Prostate diseases, Evidence-based traditional medicine, Male infertility, Erectile dysfunction, Male ageing, Reproductive infections, and Surgery.

Posters: More than 100 posters were presented.

Young andrologists: They comprised around 60% of the participants; their presentations were reviewed by the Scientific Committee of the Forum and six papers were judged to be of particularly high quality and scientific promise among many other good papers. Excellent Paper Certificates were awarded to the authors of these 6 presentations; they were Yong-Guang GONG (Chengdu, China), Sang Kon Lee (Chunchon, Korea), WM Lee, (Hong Kong, China), Yuan Jie NIU (Tianjin, China), Zhong Cheng XIN (Beijing, China) and Ren Dong ZHANG (Nanchong, China). Many experienced andrologists praised the growth of so many good young investigators who would assure the future.

Conclusion: As mentioned by Professor Shao-Zhen QIAN in his Opening Speech [see Proceedings in the Asian Journal of Andrology 2002; 4(3 Suppl):4-5]: "the Forum is a platform for academic exchanges as well as for international friendship and will give us an excellent and unique opportunity to get to know each other better in a more informal way". Moreover, the academic standard of the Forum was good and the organisation of this first Forum on Andrology bringing up-to-date scientific information to a large population of andrologists, mostly from Asia and mostly young, is another significant achievement for Professor QIAN and his colleagues, to add to their launching in 1999 of the English-language Asian Journal of Andrology. This journal is now indexed in: BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts, CAB Health, Chemical Abstracts; Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, EMBASE, Index Medicus, MEDLINE, PASCAL, Research Alert and SCI-Expanded. Members of ISA are encouraged to consider this journal for their publications, which would reach a large readership, mostly but not exclusively in the Asian and Pacific region.

*Previous President of ISA and previous Manager of the WHO Male Task Force. Address: ANZAC Research Institute, University of Sydney, Australia. Email <gmhw@mail.usyd.edu.au>