Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Over the past 40 years, global research efforts have identified that all human and animal cells retain genes and proteins that are dedicated to inducing cell destruction and death. These factors were initially identified for the ability to remove excess or unwanted cells during developmental processes. Next, unscheduled activity/timing of these same proteins were linked with inappropriate cell death that contributed to human illness including (but not limited to) heart disease, various forms of neurodegeneration, etc. Furthermore, insufficient activity of cell death proteins were considered to be part of the evolution of how cancer cells survive and proliferate, which is a primary determinant in cancer/tumour progression. However, beginning in the early 2000s my laboratory discovered that these death centric genes and proteins were in fact critical for normal cell maturation. Subsequently, these pioneering observations from our group were extended to most organisms and cell types. More recently, global research efforts have begun to implicate these death genes as protective factors in neurodegeneration and as unexpected initiation cues for cancer cell development and resistance to therapies. Our conference is focused on discussing these rapidly emerging roles of cell death genes and proteins, and how this unique biology acts as a primary impediment or inductive cue for a wide variety of human disease conditions. Accordingly, this meeting will bring together experts in the molecular genetics of development processes and neurodegeneration, stem cell biologists, and those with expertise in cancer cell origin and therapy resistance. This is the only global meeting dedicated to this area of research and has become a focal point for sharing and discussing this rapidly evolving research area.