Funds are requested to support the Gordon Conference """"""""Cell Contact and Adhesion"""""""" that will be held for the sixteenth time (30th year), June 8-13, 2002 at Proctor Academy, Andover, NH. The endurance of this conference testifies to its importance as a key meeting for the field of cell-cell interactions. It is interdisciplinary, encompassing molecular, structural, genetic and cellular approaches to dissecting the architecture of cell-cell contacts, determining their cellular, histological, and organismal roles and their involvement in human disease including cancer and developmental defects. The focus of this year's meeting will be the role of adhesive and occludens type cell-cell contacts in morphogenesis. The conference will interest molecular, cell, cancer and developmental biologists. The sessions cover areas of exciting and recent progress including: The role of cell contacts in: cell polarity, asymmetric cell division and planar polarity. Two sessions will cover the role of cell contacts in stem cell survival and cell fate determination. This theme has generated much excitement and will be explored in the vascular and cardiac system, epidermis and mammary gland. Three sessions will cover the role of cell contact proteins and their associated adaptor proteins in signal transduction processes governing proliferative control, cytoskeletal reorganization, cancer and metastasis. The roster of speakers includes established and renowned scientists who are active leaders in this field as well as young investigators and junior trainees who have recently contributed incisive data. The chairs have been chosen for their ability to generate discussion on a wide range of topics. As is traditional for this meeting, four slots have been reserved in the last session for the inclusion of late breaking developments and a short talk slot has been allocated at the end of each session to highlight the work of promising young investigators. ? ? This conference will bring together scientists working in vertebrate and invertebrate systems who do not meet in other forums. The components of cell-cell contacts are tumor suppressors and oncogenes and thus this conference will be highly relevant for the mission of the NCI. Cell-cell contact proteins provide the physical force that unite cells into functional tissues during embryogenesis and, as the genetic approaches highlighted in this meeting show, defects in these components lead to birth defects that are highly relevant to the mission of NICHD. This conference is also relevant to the mission of, and will report research that is also funded by NIDDK, NIAMS, NHLBI and NIGMS. ? ? ?
