Autophagy Network Integration in Health and Disease

Keystone Symposia, Silverthorne CO

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Autophagy Network Integration in Health and Disease, organized by Drs. Ivan Dikic, Anna Katharina Simon and J. Wade Harper. The meeting will be held in Copper Mountain, Colorado from February 12-16, 2017. Autophagy is a quality control mechanism that plays an important role in health and disease, including cancer, infection, inflammation and neurodegeneration. The core autophagy machinery has been identified and studied in detail. In addition, integration and cross-talk with other cellular pathways is becoming clearer, providing a rationale for why autophagy is linked to so many diverse (patho)physiological functions. It is becoming obvious that autophagy pathways implicated in chronic inflammation and infection also contribute to the development of cancer. Future challenges are focused on integrative structural, molecular and system approaches that are able to provide a much more refined understanding of autophagy regulatory networks. This meeting will highlight basic molecular and network insights in the autophagy system that are critical in life processes and multiple disease areas, and will examine the prospects for therapeutic targeting of the autophagy system. The meeting will bring together a variety of investigators exploring different facets of autophagy, and their interactions will expand our knowledge of fundamental autophagic mechanisms in different physiological and pathological settings.