Support is requested for a pair of concurrent Keystone Symposia meetings entitled Parkinson's Disease: Genetics, Mechanisms and Therapeutics (organized by Patrick A. Lewis, Thomas Gasser and Marcel P. van der Brug) and Alzheimer's Disease - From Fundamental Insights to Light at the End of the Translational Tunnel (organized by John Q. Trojanowski, Charles F. Albright and Hui Zheng). These meetings will be held in Keystone, Colorado from March 2 - 7, 2014. Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and related neurodegenerative disorders are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the United States and globally due to the longevity revolution. The consequences of these diseases are grave, both for individuals and the global community, prompting concerns that rising healthcare costs have the potential to result in deleterious effects on national economies that could spell disaster unless disease modifying therapies are discovered very soon. The Keystone Symposia meeting on Parkinson's disease will cover our current state of knowledge of the global genetic architecture of PD, how this is informing cellular and molecular approaches to the etiology of the disease, and the implications of these discoveries in patient diagnosis and development of novel treatments for PD. The parallel meeting on Alzheimer's disease will explore fundamental insights into mechanisms of AD and the opportunities they provide to translate this knowledge into meaningful interventions for AD. These meetings will share a keynote address and four plenary sessions which, in combination, will explore the commonalities between these two devastating disorders and discuss how recent advances in each field can be used to accelerate research. In addition, these meetings will overlap with the annual meeting of the Parkinson's Association of the Rockies that will also be held in Keystone, Colorado in 2014. Keystone Symposia will invite Association attendees to participate in luncheons and other informal activities and we anticipate that interactions between Keystone Symposia participants and the Association attendees will foster new interactions between clinicians, patients and basic researchers.
Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and related neurodegenerative disorders are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the United States and globally due to the longevity revolution. One of the strongest themes to emerge from research into these diseases is that there are deleterious cellular processes that are common to PD and AD, and it is increasingly clear that researchers in both fields have much to learn from one another. The Keystone Symposia meetings on Parkinson's disease: Genetics, Mechanisms and Therapeutics and Alzheimer's disease - From Fundamental Insights to Light at the End of the Translational Tunnel will explore the commonalities between these two devastating disorders and discuss how recent advances in each field can be used to accelerate research.
