New Committee members needed!
The current BPG committee membership and terms of office are shown in the table below. From July 2005 David Taylor will take over from Jim Lloyd as Secretary / Treasurer. This will leave 2 vacancies on the committee. If you are interested in serving on the committee then please complete the enclosed nomination form and return to the Secretary by 27 May 2005. Election to the committee will by postal ballot of all full members. The final balance of the committee must include at least 2 clinicians and 2 non-clinicians.
Recent BPG Meetings and Workshops
Workshops
After lengthy discussion with referees, the report on the BPG / UK Skin Lymphoma Group workshop on Photopheresis (Belfast, December 2001) has now been accepted for publication in the British Journal of Dermatology.
BPG at BSID, University of Cambridge, 11-13 April 2005
The BPG invited Professor Rex Tyrell from University of Bath to give the BPG guest lecture. He gave a fascinating presentation on the topic: “Steps in the pathway of UVA / oxidantinducible gene expression in human skin cells - the heme oxygenase example “
Forthcoming BPG Meetings and Workshops
BAD 2005
The annual BPG scientific symposium will be held in Glasgow on 7th July during the BAD conference. This is preceded by the BPG annual general meeting. A stimulating program has been arranged which starts with two invited speakers: Prof Lehman will talk on the XPD gene and Dr Sarkany will give a presentation on porphyria. This will be followed by 11 proffered papers and there are also 7 poster presentations.
A Workshop on systemic photo-protection is being organised by Lesley Rhodes for early next year.
A workshop on optical imaging of the skin is being organised. Anyone interested in contributing should contact Jim Lloyd.
BPG website
The BPG website can be accessed at http://www.bpg.org.uk/ or by following a link from the BAD website. Any feedback or suggestions for the website please send to Tony Pearse.
PPP journal
PPP continues to thrive as the only international journal covering the full spectrum of photobiological topics as applied to the skin. The educational and update articles in the series "School in Photodermatology" and "What's New in Photobiology" are particularly popular. We welcome manuscript. Submission from a wide range of perspectives, i.e. photodermatology, Photochemistry, photoimmunology, phototherapy, photophysics and relevant engineering subjects. Articles are published efficiently, with the average time from acceptance of a manuscript to final publication of 3.7 months. The current impact factor is 1.0.
Lesley Rhodes, Co-editor
Membership
Membership continues to increase and we now have 90 Full members. The committee would like to further increase the size of the membership and would be grateful if current members could encourage colleagues to join. To this end a flyer concerning the BPG and an application form is enclosed. The committee is keen to encourage applications from the full range of people with an interest in photodermatology. This includes, Nurses, phototherapists, technicians, scientists and doctors working in the NHS, university and industry. Subscription collection Members are reminded that in future subscriptions will be collected by the BAD in January. Previously subscriptions were collected by the BPG in March. Many members had set up standing orders in favour of the BPG and have not cancelled these. If you have not already done so please cancel this standing order.
BPG Committee
| Post | Name | Designation | City | Term |
| Chairman | Dr David Bilsland | Consultant Dermatologist | Glasgow | 2004-2006 |
| Hon Secretary/Treasurer | Dr Jim Lloyd | Consultant Physicist | Newcastle | 2003-2005 |
| Committee Members | Mr David Taylor | Physicist | Gloucester | 2003-2005 |
| Dr Tony Pearse (website editor) | Clinical scientist | Cardiff | 2003-2005 | |
| Dr Alex Anstey | Consultant Dermatologist | Newport | 2004-2006 | |
| Dr Arjida Woollons | Consultant Dermatologist | Worthing | 2004-2006 | |
| Ex-officio | Dr Lesley Rhodes | Co-editor PPP | Manchester | |
| Ex-officio | Dr Warwick Morrison | Editor, PPP | Lutherville, USA |
Sponsors
The BPG are very grateful for sponsorship from the following companies: Crawford Pharmaceuticals, 3M Healthcare Limited Galderma