2008 Calcium Signaling and Disease SGP Conference

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests funds to help support an international symposium on "Calcium signaling and disease" to be held September 3 - 7, 2008, at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This meeting will be the 62nd Annual Symposium of the Society of General Physiologists (SGP). The major purpose of the SGP is to host a symposium each year on a different subject of wide interest to cell biologists, physiologists and biophysicists. The topic chosen for the 2008 meeting is especially timely and compelling. The previous SGP meetings (in 1986 and 1998) were focused on the cutting-edge Ca2+ signaling research at the time when those meetings were held. In planning the 2008 meeting, it became clear that recent explosive developments in the area of Ca2+ signaling for the first time actually placed a focus on disease-oriented research within reach. Although many Ca2+ signaling meetings incorporated a "disease" session, our symposium will be the first in the U.S. focused exclusively on pathological aspects of Ca2+ signaling. In selecting our program we focused on several key areas of research where the progress has been most dramatic, and the obtained clues most tantalizing. These areas are: (1) cardiac and skeletal muscle diseases (arrhythmia, sudden death syndrome, malignant hyperthermia and muscular dystrophy), (2) neurodegenerative disease (Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's); (3) disorders of the central nervous system (familial migraine and autism); (4) disorders linked to dysfunction of Ca2+ pumps (deafness, Darier and Hailey-Hailey disease); (5) disorders linked to dysfunction of the trp channel family (polycystic kidney disease, hypomagnesaemia, infertility and diabetes). These topics represent a unique blend of disease-related projects spanning several medical subspecialties but unified by their focus on Ca2+ signaling. We expect that this conference will attract a significant number of scientists working on Ca2+ signaling but also a number of clinical scientists and disease- oriented basic researchers who have not been exposed to cutting edge Ca2+ signaling research previously. We hope that by promoting an exchange between traditional "Ca2+ signaling researchers" and "disease researchers" our meeting will play an important role in accelerating progress in the field and its translation into clinical insights and practice. The meetings organized by the Society of General Physiologists seem to be ideally poised to facilitate such critical developments in translational biomedical research. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This proposal requests funds to help support an international symposium on "Calcium signaling and disease" to be held September 3 - 7, 2008, at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This meeting will be the 62nd Annual Symposium of the Society of General Physiologists (SGP). The major purpose of the SGP is to host a symposium each year on a different subject of wide interest to cell biologists, physiologists and biophysicists.