Epididymal research one generation on

Chen (SIBS, CAS), Xuefeng Huang (First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical College), Hongjun Li (Peking Union Medical College), Zheng Li (Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jaio Tong University School of Medicine), Zhongdon Qiao (Shanghai Jiao Tong University), Jian Wang (Shanghai Institute of Planned Parenthood Research), Hua Xu (SIBS, CAS), Wenjuan Zhang (SIBS, CAS), Qinzhu Zheng (Asian Journal of Andrology). The conference was sponsored by four foreign societies; the American Society of Andrology (USA), the Society for Reproduction and Fertility (UK), the Society for Reproductive Biology (Australia), a n d t h e S o c i e t y f o r t h e S t u d y o f Reproduction (USA); by four units from the Chinese Academy of Sciences; headquarters of CAS, Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, School of Life Science and Technology, Shanghai Tech University; by six companies, Thermofisher, Shanghai Bio-Chain Co., Ltd., Illumina China, Gene Company Limited, Shanghai Generay Biotech Co., Ltd., and Guangzhou Kangrun Biotech Co., Ltd.; and by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Shanghai Renji Hospital, Shanghai Research Center for Model Organisms. The aim of the congress was to provide orientation for future epididymal research, to attract people to join together to make great contributions on some not only important, but also clinically needed problems, by multidisciplinary approaches and new technologies. The meeting consisted of eight sessions before a final audience-led session on challenges to future epididymal research. In these sessions were 41 talks, including those from 25 invited speakers (36% from the USA) and 16 oral presentations T Sixth International Conference on the Epididymis (Epididymis VI: Networks in the Epididymis, Basic and Clinical Research) was held between October 31 and November 3 2014 in Shanghai, China. This was the second Chinese venue for this meeting, fol lowing the f irst meeting concentrating solely on the Epididymis (retrospectively named Epid I) in Hong Kong in 1992. Between these two have been held 4-yearly meetings in Newcastle, Australia in 1998 (Epid II); in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA in 2002 (Epid III); in Chatel-Guyon, France in 2006 (Epid IV) and in Sañ Paulo, Brazil in 2010 (Epid V). Some of the senior participants had also been present at forerunner meetings: the First Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Reproduction in the USA in 1968, which featured a session “From Caput to Cauda” chaired by JM Bedford with MC Orgebin-Crist as speaker, and The Epididymis and Male Fertility in Germany in 1985, when talks were given by JM Bedford and TG Cooper.1 The venue for Epid IV was the lecture hall of the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (SIBS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), close to the participants’ accommodation, either adjacent to the SIBS campus (Hope Hotel) or a short walk away (Pine City Hotel). Epid VI received 99 online registrations, from 15 countries, of which 48% were from China. In addition to the registered participants, there were 30–40 local attendees as audience per day. The Local Organizing Committee comprised (in alphabetical order): Degui INVITED EDITORIAL