Blood/Brain Interfaces in Health and Disease

The Gordon Research Conference on “Barriers of the Central Nervous System” will be held at Colby Sawyer College, New Hampshire, on June 20-25, 2010. Its overall goal is to increase the understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying the function of the blood brain barrier (BBB) / neurovascular unit (NVU) and the Choroid Plexus in health and disease. One major topic of this conference is to provide information how these barriers prevent therapeutics from entering the brain of patients suffering from diseases of the CNS. Therefore, alterations of the NUV and the Choroid Plexus under pathological conditions are central themes of this conference. The conference covers a specialized area of research, which brings together basic scientists as well as clinicians, who will both benefit from the collaborative effort to approach and solve the problems being related to the treatment of CNS diseases because of our very limited knowledge about the Blood/CNS barriers.

The program will include 2 keynote lectures and 8 sessions, that address tight junction molecules and signaling at the BBB, developmental biology of the cerebral vascular system and early and late stages of ageing of the BBB, Blood/CNS Barrier alterations in metabolic/genetic diseases, Blood/CNS Barriers in inflammatory disease states, BBB changes in stroke, trauma and epilepsy, molecular biology and regulation of the blood-CSF barrier / choroid plexus, transporter function and regulation at the blood / CNS barriers and BBB from an industrial perspective-Drug delivery to the CNS.

The Conference will be accompanied by a preceding Gordon Research Seminar from June 19-20, 2010, in Colby Sawyer College, New Hampshire. Graduate students, PostDocs and Junior faculty are particularly encouraged to participate in the Seminar, the focus of which is on methodological approaches towards BBB studies, and to present and discuss their data.