Molecular Mechanisms and Physiology

This meeting is oversubscribed. Applications will only be considered by the conference chairs if more seats become available due to cancellations. All applications for this meeting must be submitted by February 11, 2024

Autophagy is a fundamental biological process that impacts nearly all facets of human health and plays critical roles in many human diseases, especially inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases, as well as cancer. During the autophagy process, cellular components are sequestered into double-membrane vesicles targeted for lysosomal degradation by a set of evolutionary conserved autophagy-related genes, which in turn ensure homeostasis at the cellular, tissue and organismal level. Enormous progress has been made in revealing the core molecular processes of autophagy in the past few years. At the same time, the relationships of autophagy with lysosome biology, membrane traffic, secretion, signaling, membrane damage, and inflammation are becoming clearer. All this progress has converged to create unparalleled opportunities to elucidate physiology and pathophysiology at progressively higher levels of rigor and detail. The opportunities are greater than ever, but exploiting them requires communication and collaboration between experts in all aspects of autophagy and its allied fields. Insights into basic mechanism are needed to inspire new therapeutic concepts, while insights from physiology and pathophysiology are important to chart the direction of future basic studies. The 2024 GRC on Autophagy in Stress, Development, and Disease will bring together researchers working on basic mechanisms at the molecular, cellular, structural, and biophysical levels with specialists in development, aging, neurodegeneration, infectious disease and cancer. With its historical role at the center of the field undiminished, this GRC will define the agenda for the field in the coming two years.