Neurodegenerative Diseases: New Insights and Therapeutic Opportunities

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ABSTRACT Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Neurodegenerative Diseases: New Insights and Therapeutic Opportunities, organized by Drs. Valina L. Dawson, Joseph W. Lewcock and Fred H. Gage. The conference will be held in Keystone, Colorado from June 16-20, 2019. The global burden of neurodegenerative disease is staggering and growing at an alarming rate as the population ages. While Alzheimer's disease and related dementias, as well as, Parkinson's disease and related disorders, account for the majority of those afflicted, there are also less common but equally devastating diseases. Technical and conceptual advances are revealing disease mechanisms and providing new therapeutic opportunities. Misfolded proteins have been understood to be at the center of neurodegenerative diseases but recently there is an appreciation that these misfolded proteins may serve as seeds to template the misfolding of normal proteins, that transmission of these seeds may underlie disease progression, and that there may be different strains of these seeds with differential toxicities. Biophysical analysis of these proteins reveals a role for phase transition and liquid demixing of these intrinsically disordered proteins. Synaptic loss is an important feature of neurodegeneration which may occur long before neuronal loss, but be critically important in disease presentation and loss of function. Glia and immune activation contribute to neurodegeneration and synaptic loss, and must be understood and controlled if the disease process is to be tempered or stopped. This conference aims to address the current state of knowledge in these emerging area and to provide advanced discussion of these topics; the opportunity for interaction between scientists from different fields of research will foster new collaborations that may lead to new therapeutic opportunities to combat the coming crisis and provide medical care for those suffering from neurodegenerative diseases.