This proposal requests partial support for the meeting ?Translation Machinery in Health & Disease ? from Biology to Medicine? as a part of the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) series in conjunction with Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) that will be held in Hotel Galvez, Galveston, Texas, during March 18-24, 2017. To our knowledge, this GRC/GRS meeting is the first and only conference linking researchers in diverse fields of the translation process to experts in clinical sector. The purpose of this conference is to provide a platform in which researchers and clinicians can exchange and obtain state-of-the-art information on the relevance of diverse translational processes to human disease and health, and to open doors for the development of novel treatments and therapies. This conference will deal with subjects that are common interests for both clinicians and basic scientists including cancer, infectious and immunological diseases, hematological and vascular diseases, neurological diseases, and metabolic diseases. In addition it will also include talks on newly emerging technologies for translation research. The associated GRS will provide early career scientists (both graduate students and post-doctoral fellows) with opportunities to present their research on translation and disease and network with experts this field. This meeting will convene 40 leading experts who cover critical basic science and clinical topics in translation with a total of 200 participants for seven days. The GRS meeting is planned to coordinate with the GRC with four sessions including an opening keynote lecture (Dr. Christine Mayr at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center). Subsequently, the GRC meeting will be organized into nine sessions including an opening session featuring two keynote lectures, followed by eight sessions, each of which will focus on a specific disease area. The keynote lecture will be given by Dr. Nahum Sonenberg who is one of the most renowned scientists for his seminal contributions to our understanding of translation, and notable for the discovery of the mRNA 5' cap-binding protein, eIF4E, the rate-limiting component of the eukaryotic translation apparatus. He will address the functional relevance of eIF4E to cancer and other diseases. In addition, five afternoon poster sessions including one during the GRS meeting will allow all participants to present their research. Following the spirit of Gordon Conferences, this meeting will seek for every possibility to provide young investigators, women, and minorities with the opportunities to present their research and interact with senior key leaders in the field. As the first and only disease-focused conference in the field of translation, this conference would significantly impact our current understanding of many important diseases?such as cancer, neurodegeneration, diabetes, anemia, and viral and bacterial infections?and their treatment.
Protein translation is a complex biological process involving many components and regulators and its disturbance can result in diverse human diseases including cancer, infectious and immunological, hematological and vascular, neurological, and metabolic diseases. The 2017 ?Translation Machinery in Health & Disease ? from Biology to Medicine? GRC in conjunction with GRS is disease-focused, interdisciplinary conference linking researchers in diverse areas of translation research to the experts in clinical sector with a goal of creating collaborations between researchers and clinicians to develop future therapies.
