Celebrating the ASN at 50.

By bringing together individuals with complementary expertise, interests, and ideals, medical societies realize shared goals and ultimately improve care for people worldwide. For the past 50 years, the American Society of Nephrology (ASN) has achieved these objectives and accomplished its initial mission of advancing the science of nephrology. In the process, the ASN has grown to become the largest kidney–focused society in the world with close to 16,000 members in.100 countries, hold the preeminent nephrology meeting with an average of 13,000 participants from around the globe, and produce the most popular portfolio of nephrology-focused publications. Established as a national society, the ASN now encompasses, represents, and serves an international community of dedicated health professionals committed to curing kidney diseases. In the early 1960s, a United States society was needed to unify a number of seemingly disparate societies, councils, and other entities that were all connected by a shared interest in the kidney in health and disease. These groups included the growing number of physicians and scientists whose focus centered on renal physiology and related metabolism, the circulation and its disorders, hypertension, immunology, acute kidney disease and CKD, renal pathology, dialysis, or renal transplantation. The general awareness of a need for such a society crystallized into a distinct plan to establish the ASN, largely as the result of an unanticipated invitation. The Third Congress of the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) was to take place in Washington, DC in 1966. The ISN invited theRenal Sectionof theCouncil onCirculation of theAmericanHeart Association (AHA) to host thismeeting. Interacting with the ISN required a society that was sufficiently representative of nephrology’s breadth in the United States at the time, an entity with a broader purview than that provided by the Renal Section of AHA’s Council on Circulation. A founding group of 18 physicians and scientists from the Renal Section of AHA’s Council on Circulation and the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) was thus assembled.1,2 This founding group included many luminaries, such as Robert Berliner, Neal Bricker, John Merrill, George Schreiner, Belding Scribner, and Donald Seldin. On June 26, 1966, they conferred at the Gramercy Park Hotel in New York, New York to draft the ASN’s constitution and bylaws, decide on its first officers, and select the venue for its first meeting. This group was supported, in part, by funding from the NKF. The ASN’s provenance, therefore, has ties to the ISN, the NKF, and the AHA, three important relationships that endure today.1,2 TheASN’sfirst nationalmeetingwasheld inOctoberof 1967 in Los Angeles, California. At this meeting, 1250 participants heard the latest advances of the time in renal physiology, dialysis, and transplantation. The size, scope, and reputation of the meeting grew steadily through the succeeding years, such that, on average, the meeting now attracts almost one half of its participants from outside the United States, involves representation by.100 countries, and generates an estimated $35,000,000 for the host city. The annual meeting continues to be a major venue where breakthroughs in the science and practice of nephrology are announced, and many major advances have been initially reported there throughout the past 50 years. The ASN Annual Meeting has been the showcase for reporting important clinical trials thathavehadamajor impacton thepracticeofnephrology, including the first large–scale randomized, controlled trials of ACE inhibitors and ARBs in diabetic nephropathy and trials on dialysis adequacy, hypertension management, ESA usage, immunosuppressive regimens in both kidney transplants and GN, and treatment of diabetic nephropathy to name but a few. It has also been at the ASN Annual Meeting that numerous studies have been presented that identified key factors in renal development, reported identification and characterization of transporters that play key roles in renal physiology, revealed the importance in both physiology and pathophysiology of the different cell types of the glomerulus, and elucidated mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of both acute kidney disease and CKD. Two of these highlights are the identification of polycystin 1 as the gene responsible for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease and the identification of the role of PLA2R in membranous nephropathy. The meeting has witnessed the continued evolution of scientific approaches to understanding kidney function and diseases from micropuncture and isolated tubule perfusion to the use of genetically manipulated model organisms and omics research. When the ASN formed in 1966, its focus was primarily on hosting the annual meeting. As the organization evolved, the ASN expanded to feature education, communications, research, Published online ahead of print. Publication date available at www.jasn.org.