Message from the President

Dear Pancreatobiliary Pathology Society Members,

Last year was a very productive year that culminated with our inaugural Companion Society Meeting at the annual USCAP meeting in Vancouver, Canada in March. I want to thank our speakers, Ralph Hruban, Olca Basturk, and Gunter Kloppel for their excellent educational talks, and Daniela Allende and Grace Kim for presenting a summary of the findings from the Grossing Working Group, our first active working group. I want to thank the audience for their attendance (and for not being distracted by the beautiful scenery that flanked one entire wall of the meeting room).

At our annual business meeting, which immediately followed the companion session, the PBPS presented its abstract award to Tao Wang for his presentation entitled “Mass-Forming Intraductal Neoplasms of the Biliary Tract Comprise Morphologically and Genetically Distinct Entities” (congratulations Tao!) and we welcomed many new members. The official minutes of the Business Meeting are available on our website.

Members of all PBPS committees worked extremely hard over the past year not only to create a successful companion session, but to also strengthen existing and bring new activities to our young society. I’d like to recognize the following members who really made this past year a success: Olca Basturk, who was instrumental in organizing the companion session; Daniela Allende and Grace Kim, for their contributions to the companion session; Mabel Ko for creating, updating and managing our website; and David Lewin, for running the business meeting and keeping our finances in order.

I’d like to touch upon a few items that are currently in the PBPS pipeline:

• The Grossing Working Group is in the process of converting their Companion Society meeting presentation into a manuscript.
• We also have a Cytology Working Group, which is co-Chaired by Michelle Reid and Barbara Centeno,
• and we are forming a Neo-adjuvant Therapy Working Group to tackle the challenges of assessing these difficult specimens.
• Finally, it won’t be long until we start planning our Companion Meeting for 2019.

I am honored to have been elected President of the PBPS and I am proud to carry on the tradition of fostering excellence and collaboration in education, research and the clinical practice of pancreatobiliary pathology around the world.

– Alyssa M. Krasinskas, MD