Upcoming Medical Conferences in Keystone

Neural Environment in Disease: Glial Responses and Neuroinflammation (Z1) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Jun 16 - 20, 2019 at Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. Course Description : The response of the central nervous system to injury and disease is a complex physiological process that involves the coordinated actions of many different cell types. The interplay of neural cells and vascular cells along with the innate and adaptive immune systems determines the response to different injury and disease stimuli and whether there nervous system will repair or degenerate. Understanding these complex cellular environment is essential to understanding disease pathogenesis, elucidating underlying disease etiology, and developing treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases. The goal of this meeting will be to bring together people who study different aspects of neurological diseases and facilitate the interchange of ideas necessary for identifying new mechanisms underlying complex intercellular interactions in the diseased nervous system. This will include people who study resident neural cells (neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes), vascular cells (blood-brain barrier, lymphatics, glymphatics) and immune cells (microglia, innate peripheral immune cells, adaptive immune cells) in the context of a variety of neurodegenerative, neuroinflammatory, and neuropsychiatric diseases. Further, we will also attract people who implement different techniques including genetic mouse models, human iPSCs, invertebrate models, imaging, cell biology, and behavior in their research which will further facilitate exchange of ideas and foster collaboration. With the combined expertise at this meeting, we will accelerate our ability to understand the complex neural response to injury and disease-a necessary step towards developing novel therapeutics for complex neurological diseases. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Neurodegenerative Diseases: New Insights and Therapeutic Opportunities (Z2) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Jun 16 - 20, 2019 at Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. Course Description : The global burden of neurodegenerative disease is staggering and growing at an alarming rate as the worlds populations age. While Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias and 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 under lie disease progression, and 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 areas, to provide advanced discussion of these topics, to provide the opportunity for interaction between scientists from different fields of research and foster new collaborations that may lead to new therapeutic opportunities to combat the coming crisis in providing medical care for those suffering from neurodegenerative diseases. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

2019 National Nurse Practitioner Symposium is organized by National Nurse Practitioner Symposium and will be held during Jul 18 - 21, 2019 at Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. The target audience for this medical event is nurses. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Colorado Environmental Health Association Annual Education Conference (AEC) is organized by Colorado Environmental Health Association (CEHA) and will be held from Sep 17 - 20, 2019 Keystone Lodge & Spa, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. AEC Objectives: Provide high quality educational opportunities: Research, network and strive to identify emerging environmental health issues and topics of importance to CEHA members and attendees. Bring forth environmental health leaders to share their expertise and experience in an educational setting. Provide interactive sessions for attendee participation Provide education sessions that enhance and build the skills of the attendees. Develop leaders and connect attendees: Provide education sessions that enhance and build the leadership skills of the attendees. Provide social opportunities for attendees to network and share information. Promote collaboration between environmental industry and environmental health professionals. Stimulate and foster interaction among all conference attendees Expand beyond the EH norm: Challenge the process and bring forth new ideas. Incorporate all aspects of environmental health and reach out to potential new members to expand membership. Partner with identified organizations that enhance environmental health. Ensure that the AEC is sustainable: Utilize services, products and accommodations that support sustainability and minimize CEHA’s environmental impact. Maintain emerging information and awareness of sustainability efforts with membership and attendees. Make the conference unforgettable: Provide fun activities and entertainment for attendees to unwind. Ensure that the conference logistics enhance the overall experience.  Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Hypoxia: Molecules, Mechanisms and Disease (A3) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Jan 19 - 23, 2020 at Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. Description Hypoxia research reflects a dynamic and rapidly expanding field with growing implications ranging from basic molecular biology to medicine. Changes in cellular oxygen availability secondary to environmental challenges or diseases, trigger a broad array of adaptive responses that can be rapid (seconds) or more protracted (weeks to months). The molecules and mechanisms involved in these versatile hypoxia signaling pathways are fundamental to the pathogenesis of highly prevalent medical conditions, among which are respiratory depression, hypertension, tumor progression and inflammation. Moreover, oxygen regulates cellular processes, which are essential to cell reprogramming, development and tissue/organ regeneration. In this conference on Hypoxia, the tenth in the series of Keystone Symposia, experts from basic, clinical and industrial backgrounds will gather to update the status of the field, to discuss the most relevant discoveries and their applications, and to envision the conceptual and technological trends for upcoming years. The conference is designed to provide a broad coverage of the hypoxia field, with emphasis in translational strategies and perspectives. It will also promote multidisciplinary collaborations between scientists from different research backgrounds and the interaction between new graduate students and postdocs with leaders in this discipline. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Cancer Epigenetics: New Mechanisms and Therapeutic Opportunities (J4) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Jan 26 - 30, 2020 at Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. Description The 2020 Keystone Symposia Cancer Epigenetics: New Mechanisms and Therapeutic Opportunities in conjunction with the joint conference, Gene Regulation: From Mechanisms to Disease, co-organized by Karen Adelman and Patrick Cramer, will highlight state-of-the art advances in methods, mechanistic insights, and drug discovery efforts across these interrelated fields. Furthermore, results from exome- and genome-wide sequencing efforts point toward major roles for chromatin regulatory machinery in cancer. These data emphasize the immediate need for mechanistic understanding and, in parallel, the identification of novel strategies toward therapeutic targeting for this class of cancer drivers. This conference will help to foster interactions and new connections between basic biologists focused on chromatin architecture, structure, and function with translational biologists focused on model systems for mechanistic interrogation. Participants will attend sessions that will feature the presentation of new methods and techniques in systems biology, imaging, genomics, and drug discovery approaches. Other topics will explore the roles for enhancer structure, genome organization and topology on DNA accessibility and gene expression. Finally, this conference will expose trainees across a wide range of international, interdisciplinary laboratories to cutting edge science in cancer epigenetics and related fields, hoping to further their interests and commitment to this area of biologic research The concurrent joint conference on "Gene Regulation: From Mechanisms to Disease" is another unique, one-of-a-kind aspect of this conference, allowing participants to attend talks in their interest areas across two closely-related disciplines. Our cancer-centered audience will have an opportunity to attend select talks as well as two joint sessions, which all the organizers have carefully considered and designed together. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Gene Regulation: From Mechanisms to Disease (J3) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Jan 26 - 30, 2020 at Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. Description Organismal development, homeostasis and healthy aging all rely on precise control of gene expression programs. Recent technological advances in structural biology, real-time imaging, and next generation sequencing have shed new light on decades-old questions about gene regulation, and we seek to highlight these advances. This meeting aims to bring together pioneers in cryoEM, single-cell microscopy, single cell sequencing and three-dimensional genome architecture, with leading experts in transcriptional regulation, to seed new collaborations and discoveries. This conference provides an ideal environment to foster interactions between transcriptional biologists and experts in single cell imaging and genomic approaches and spur conversations about how to interweave new techniques for structural biology with our growing appreciation that many critical interactions involve intrinsically disordered domains (which are by definition not well behaved in most structural approaches). Participants will attend sessions that critically evaluate the impact of genome organization on gene expression. The conference will also expose trainees to the best science possible and instill in them the enthusiasm we feel for the future of the field. Finally, pairing of this meeting with Cancer Epigenetics is ideal as the topics are inherently related. This allows our meeting to focus on underlying mechanisms and normal developmental systems, while enabling the audience to attend lectures in gene dysregulation in cancer. We plan two joint sessions to maximize interactions. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Pain: Aligning the Target (J7) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Feb 02 - 05, 2020 at Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. Description The Keystone Symposia on Pain: Aligning the Target will bring together researchers from diverse disciplines to examine the complex problem of pain and to shed light on mechanistic underpinnings and molecular approaches towards treatment. Topics will range from understanding neurotransmission and the anatomy of pain, structural features of molecular targets for modulating pain, and novel approaches, including drug development, optogenetic and genetic approaches to controlling pain. Most conferences on pain discuss pain management (clinical focus), neuroanatomical transmission of pain (neuroscience), or the mechanism by which analgesics/anesthetics work with a focus on particular molecular targets (pharmacology). Our goal is to bring these disciplines together to aid in a more efficient design of preclinical studies and drug development by educating each other in the individual challenges and offerings of our disciplines. Ultimately, this conference should inspire researchers from diverse backgrounds to examine this fundamental health problem via many new angles. Importantly, researchers that focus on the neurocircuitry and cause of pain and those that focus on drug development for the treatment of pain generally are not generally attending the same conferences. Finally, this conference is being paired with a related conference on Somatosensation: from Detection to Perception, which will focus more on the neurobiology of pain sensation. There will be numerous opportunities for participants to intermingle at poster sessions and dinners, enabling the cross-fostering of ideas. Collectively, these events will provide a forum for the convergence of insights into the diverse causes of pain and the approaches to treatment.  Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

Somatosensation: From Detection to Perception (J8) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Feb 02 - 05, 2020 at Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. Description This conference focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying our senses of touch, body position or proprioception, temperature, itch, and pain (collectively called somatosensation). Somatosensation plays a major role in our daily experiences. It enables us to feel comfort from the gentlest of a caress, enjoy the coolness of a drink of water on a hot day and coordinate movements such as walking, jumping and eating. It alerts us to potential dangers in the environment allowing us to avoid harm. Somatosensory input evokes intense sensations that produce our strongest emotions (love and pain) and these help bind experiences to our memory. Dysfunction in somatosensation results in a range of clinical conditions from chronic itch and pain that cause suffering, attentional impairment, sleep disruption, despair and inability to have normal social interactions. The neural circuits and computations that convert somatosensory input into perception are almost completely unknown. However, recent advances in molecular genetics, single-cell sequencing, viral tracing, neuroimaging, high-density extracellular recording, and mouse behavioral paradigms are giving rise to breakthroughs in our understanding of the neural basis of somatosensation.  The proposed Keystone conference will begin to bridge this gap by bringing together the efforts of molecular-geneticists, physiologists, behaviorists, and computational scientists using a variety of approaches including in vivo recordings, population imaging, real-time manipulation of neurons in awake behaving animals, advanced microscopic approaches to understand connectivity, and computational approaches to model somatosensation. The conference will thus bring together researchers studying aspects of somatosensation who do not normally have the opportunity to interact. By bringing these researchers together, it enables new collaborations and ideas which will provide the blueprints to understanding specific modalities (touch, temperature, itch, and pain) from the molecular detectors in the skin, to the neurons that transmit that information, to the experience and emotions these sensations evoke. We anticipate this meeting will be a landmark event where the newest and most novel concepts in somatosensory research will be discussed.  Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.

New Insights into the Biology of Exercise (Q7) is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Mar 01 - 05, 2020 at Keystone Resort, Keystone, Colorado, United States of America. Description: Exercise and regular physical activity are widely recognized to be important for maintaining overall health and wellness. Furthermore, exercise has been proven to an effective therapy for the prevention and treatment of a variety of diseases including diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. The physiological response of selected tissues, such as skeletal muscle, heart, liver, adipose, and brain to exercise has been studied to varying degrees in healthy and unhealthy individuals; however, the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the acute responses and training adaptations to exercise remain poorly defined. The study of exercise is not a new field, but is receiving increased interest because of the many health-promoting benefits of regular aerobic and resistance exercise. In the proposed meeting, we have selected speakers who can present new findings related to the response of multiple organs/tissues (skeletal muscle, liver, adipose tissue, heart, vascular, brain) to exercise in both animal models and humans. Our goals are to 1) encourage discussion of the integrative multiple organ response to exercise, 2) encourage discussion and integration of basic and translational research, and 3) provide an environment for investigators to network and initiate new collaborations. Additional details will be posted as soon as they are available.