This proposal requests funds to help support the 2018 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Cell Death to be held from August 5-10, 2018 and its associated brand new, Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) to be held on August 4-5, 2018 at the Grant Summit Hotel, Sunday River, Maine, 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keeping with the intimate spirit of the Gordon Conference, attendance will be limited, and presentations will include unpublished work at the leading edge of this field.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 GRS target audience are students and postdoctoral fellows. The GRS provides trainees with the opportunity to present their work in a more peer-to-peer setting. We have also recruited a few established faculties from industry and academia who will provide career counseling and advice to the trainees at the GRS. We believe the GRS will provide the platform to help trainees launch their own independent research career.
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in a setting that supports structured and casual interactions, 2) promote exchange of cutting edge, innovative and unpublished science relevant to the roles of cell death in healthy and pathologic contexts, 3) Expedite discoveries that advance mechanistic knowledge on cell death and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 dysregulation of this process. The major themes of the meeting will focus on: 1) the molecular machines that regulate cell death and inflammation, 2) Death receptors and their functions beyond cell death, 3) Non-primate models of cell death, 4) how the mitochondria controls life and death decisions, 5) cell death signal adaptors in cancers, 6) RIP kinases in pathological and normal physiology, and 7) Cell death and inflammation in health and disease. The meeting will facilitate the alignment of recent breakthrough discoveries with the development of new therapies for cancer, inflammation and immunological disorders.
Many diseases are frequently associated with excessive, reduced or inappropriate cell death. The 2018 Gordon Research Conference and Gordon Research Seminar 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 dysregulated cell death, such as cancer and sterile or pathogen-induced inflammatory diseases.
