Cilia, Development and Human Disease

Keystone Symposia, Silverthorne CO

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Cilia, Development and Human Disease, organized by Elizabeth Petri Henske, Jeremy F. Reiter and Joel Rosenbaum. The meeting will be held in Tahoe City, California from March 2-7, 2014. One means by which cells sense their environment and communicate with each other is through cilia - minute hair-like projections that extend from a cell's surface. Our understanding of the cilium and ciliary-based signaling continue to rapidly advance, providing novel insights into diseases in which ciliary defects appear to play a dominant role in disease initiation (ciliopathies), as well as diseases such as cancer in which ciliary defects appear to play a critical role in disease progression. Increasingly, an understanding of ciliary disease mechanisms is leading to novel therapeutic strategies. This meeting will bring together leaders in basic mechanisms, translational research, and clinical research, with the objective of bridging the gaps between basic discovery and human disease. The general topic of this meeting is relevant to the NIDDK mission due to the role of cilia in pathogenesis of polycystic kidney disease and other kidney ciliopathies.