Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Autophagy: Molecular and Physiological Mechanisms, organized by Sharon A. Tooze, Ana Maria Cuervo and Noboru Mizushima. The meeting will be held in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, from June 5-10, 2016. Autophagy, an evolutionarily conserved pathway, is required for homeostasis, growth and survival in eukaryotic cells. Deregulation of autophagy is implicated in many human diseases, and mutations in autophagy genes are known to be a direct cause of severe human disorders. There are global efforts to understand the role of autophagy in disease pathogenesis and to develop therapeutic strategies to control the autophagic response. However, the latter is hampered by the lack of biomarkers, and disease-specific, selective autophagy targets. Overcoming this barrier in development of therapeutics will require a better understanding of basic autophagy biology. This meeting will specifically address the basic molecular pathway to increase our knowledge of the genes, proteins and signaling pathways involved in autophagy. The program will assemble experts in the molecular details of the diverse autophagic pathways and therefore provide clinicians and pharmaceutical companies with information to develop new, specific targets. Two workshops - on Selective and Non-Canonical Autophagy Pathways and Challenges in Measuring and Manipulating Autophagy in Humans - will address the relevance to diseases caused by deregulation of autophagy. These workshops will provide an opportunity for work in progress to be presented, to consolidate existing data on manipulating autophagy in disease, and to discuss and develop strategies for the future. This more informal setting of a workshop will encourage discussion of strategies and future directions not normally addressed in plenary sessions.
Autophagy is a field that impacts a broad spectrum of human health and disease. The recent expansion of data implicating autophagy in an ever increasing range of human diseases is due to genetic and mechanistic breakthroughs, and the translation of these findings to human pathology models and patients. This Keystone Symposia meeting on Autophagy: Molecular and Physiological Mechanisms will enable cross-fertilization and exchange of ideas about how autophagy impacts the development and establishment of disease, the mechanisms driving regulation of autophagy and how these mechanistic insights can aid or facilitate in the identification of new targets.
