(Taken from the applicant?s abstract): Funds are requested to help organize and carry out the 2001 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Tissue Repair and Regeneration. The meeting will be held from June 17-22, 2001, at the Colby-Sawyer Academy, in New London, New Hampshire. This conference follows four successful Gordon Conferences on Wound Repair. Recognizing the similarities of the healing process in various tissues and organs, such as skin, lung, intestine, kidney, muscle, and bone, the participants of the 1999 Wound Repair meeting have uniformly agreed to rename the conference. Therefore, a unifying goal of the meeting in 2001 will be to highlight the commonality of repair processes among tissues and the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms. Furthermore, links between repair, regeneration, development, and disease will be addressed. Nine sessions are planned which include (1) embryonic wound repair and regeneration, (2) development and repair of the lung and the gut, (3) cellular differentiation, (4) growth factor biology, (5) cellular signaling in vitro and in vivo, (6) cell matrix receptors and proteinases, (7) inflammation, (8) cell migration, and (9) a plenary lecture on differentiation processes in the intestine. Besides the presentations of the invited speakers, shorter presentations will be given by other participants. These additional talks will be chosen by the Organizing Committee early in 2001 based on submitted abstracts. The meeting will also include two poster sessions. Each session will be chaired by investigators who are renown for work on the mechanisms of repair and regeneration. The session speakers will emphasize specific, unpublished results directly related to repair and regeneration and will represent a wide range of interests. With this format, they plan to bring together scientists from different research areas who would otherwise not have the opportunity to meet at the same scientific meetings. The combination of speakers and topics are intended to significantly stimulate new ideas and collaborations in the field of tissue repair.
