Ann Louise Olson and Scott Summers are pleased to be co-chairing the next Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) conference on ?Glucose Transport: Gateway to Metabolic Systems Biology? to be held in Snowmass Village, CO from July 16-July 21, 2017. This is one of the longest-running summer conferences in the history of the FASEB series, originally launched in the early 1990s in recognition of the cloning and characterization of a subset of the major glucose transporter isoforms. Over the ensuing years, the meeting has continued to feature important advances in glucose transporter biology, but has also evolved to embrace emergent topics in metabolic control mechanisms as they relate to chronic diseases and conditions such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The meeting has consistently attracted major leaders in these fields, but also with representation of emergent young scientists. This year?s program, as seen in the accompanying attachment, is no exception. Recent progress in this area of research has been explosive, and we believe that this meeting will be particularly timely in helping to fully appreciate the significance of recent developments. This year?s conference will provide a lively mix of glucose transporter biology, metabolic regulation, including application of ?omics? and systems biology methods in this arena, and multiple lectures that feature disease translational themes. A particular focus in 2017 will be neuroendocrine, hepatic, cardiac and skeletal muscle metabolism and muscle performance in health and disease, featuring scientists that lead this field as well as younger faculty in the early stages of their independent careers. We believe that the themes of the meeting are particularly well-aligned with challenges faced by the pharmaceutical and biotech industries in identifying new therapeutic targets that combat tractable disease mechanisms. We have invited approximately 40 scientists from institutions and companies worldwide to speak at the meeting, as well as an additional dozen prominent scientists to serve as session chairs and discussion leaders. In addition to these speakers we will be selecting approximately 16 short talks from abstracts to be presented by junior trainees. We will also run several poster sessions, and continuing a new and very well-received event launched at the 2013 meeting, we will have an ?open mike? session of approximately 2 hours to allow volunteers to present particularly exciting data for discussion, with about 10 minutes per speaker. This year, we will pilot a meet the students session to facilitate networking and encourage student participation from the very beginning of the meeting. We will also pilot a career development workshop led senior scientists from academic and industry to guide students and post-docs in this important process.
The 2017 FASEB Conference on ?Glucose Transport; Gateway for Metabolic Systems Biology? is a conference to advance knowledge in the area of glucose and energy metabolism. This topic is highly relevant to several human diseases. Alterations in blood glucose levels are the foremost manifestation of Type-2 diabetes, a disease of epidemic proportion in our society. In addition, recent exciting results indicate that uncontrolled cell proliferation, which leads to diseases such as cancer, is highly dependent on glucose metabolism. There has been major progress in new approaches to understand glucose transport and metabolism, using large databases and computer-intensive methods. This conference bring together researchers with expertise in glucose transport, metabolism and systems biology, and their interactions are likely to result in new ideas for research and therapies in this important area of human health.
