This proposal requests funds to help support the 2014 Gordon Research Conference on Cell Death to be held from June 8 - 13, 2014 at Mount Snow Resort in West Dover, Vermont, USA. The Cell Death Gordon Conference is among the most highly regarded international conferences in the cell death community. Participants will give oral presentations, lead discussions or present their work in poster format. In keeping with the intimate spirit of the Gordon Conference, attendance will be limited, and presentations will include unpublished work at leading edge of this field. The overall goal of this conference is to expedite progress in cell death research and to use research findings for the development of new therapies. A secondary goal is to facilitate collaborations among cell death researchers and investigators in complementary basic, translational and clinical fields.
The aims of this conference are to: 1) gather established experts together with junior scientists and researchers new to this field in a setting that supports structured and casual interactions, 2) promote exchange of cutting edge, innovative and unpublished science relevant to the roles of cell death in healthy, aging and pathologic contexts, 3) Expedite discoveries that advance mechanistic knowledge on cell death and facilitate clinical opportunities for the treatment and diagnosis of diseases caused by the mis- regulation of this process. The major themes of the meeting will focus on: 1) cell signaling, survival and death, 2) mitochondria, metabolism and cell death, 3) apoptotic networks, 4) clearance of dying cells, 5) non-apoptotic death pathways, 6) cell survival, death and cancer, and 7) cell survival, death and the nervous system. The meeting will facilitate the alignment of recent breakthrough discoveries with the development of new therapies for cancer, immunological disorders and neurodegenerative diseases.
Many diseases are frequently associated with excessive, reduced or inappropriate cell death. The 2014Gordon Research Conference on Cell Death will foster unencumbered scientific exchange, focusing on mechanisms that specify cell death in normal development and in various pathologies. The conference will accelerate discovery in these areas and will also advance new opportunities for therapeutic intervention in the many diseases that are caused by mis-regulated cell death, such as cancer, auto-immune diseases, neurodegeneration and other age-associated disorders.
