Conference Description
The goal of this recently established Gordon Research Conference (GRC) series, entitled “Central Nervous System Injury and Repair”, together with its accompanying Gordon Research Seminar (GRS), is to provide a forum for the exchange of the most exciting and cutting-edge scientific data and novel ideas in the rapidly advancing fields of injury, regeneration, and repair of the nervous system, with particular emphasis on spinal cord injury. Spinal cord injury is a major medical challenge since it leaves millions of people worldwide paralyzed and with loss of sensation, cardiorespiratory, bladder and sexual dysfunction as well as pain for their lifetime. Despite many years of efforts, an effective treatment or cure is still lacking. This is in part due to lack of full understanding of this complex condition where in addition to the damage of axons, spinal cord injury leads to profound changes in the local cellular and molecular environment, involving neurons, glia, immune cells as well as to systemic changes in metabolism and immunity. An emerging consensus is that combinatorial approaches targeting multiple cellular and molecular aspects of the injury response will be necessary to repair axonal injury and induce functional recovery. This conference will feature an exciting program with speakers presenting cutting edge and innovative science including topics that span from injury in invertebrates, mammalian animal models, organoids to patients, highlighting cellular and molecular mechanisms that control the injury response, circuit remodeling and the repair processes. Sessions on cell therapies and emerging neurotechnologies will propel new knowledge and approaches towards clinical translation, whose challenges and opportunities will be discussed.
Ole Kiehn (University of Copenhagen and Karolinska Institute) and Jeffrey Macklis (Harvard University) will deliver keynote lectures.
In addition, we will be featuring a GRS that will provide an excellent opportunity for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to share their research progress. We welcome attendance from basic and physician scientists, from industry, and any stakeholder, and we encourage a breath of diversity of meeting participants across gender, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, geographical locations and age groups that will facilitate a broad and enriched communication of the scientific content.
The topics, speakers, and discussion leaders for the conference sessions are displayed below. The conference chair is currently developing their detailed program, which will include the complete meeting schedule, as well as the talk titles for all speakers. The detailed program will be available by June 17, 2021. Please check back for updates.
Non-Mammalian Animal Models of Axonal Injury
Discussion Leaders
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Britta Eickholt (Institute of Biochemistry, Charite - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany)
Speakers
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Catherina Becker (University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
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Marc Hammarlund (Yale University, USA)
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Melissa Rolls (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Axon Growth and Guidance in Development and Injury
Discussion Leaders
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Frank Bradke (German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Germany)
Speakers
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Florence Bareyre (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany)
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Zhigang He (Harvard Medical School, USA)
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Kevin Park (The University of Miami, USA)
Cell-Cell Communication: Local Inflammatory and Non-Inflammatory Post-Injury Responses
Discussion Leaders
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Binhai Zheng (University of California, San Diego, USA)
Speakers
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Phillip Popovich (The Ohio State University College of Medicine, USA)
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Hongyan Zou (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA)
Mechanisms of Injury-Dependent Pain and Nociception
Discussion Leaders
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Armin Blesch (University of California, San Diego, USA)
Speakers
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Victoria Abraira (Rutgers University, USA)
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Alexander Chesler (National Institutes of Health, USA)
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Stephen McMahon (King's College London, United Kingdom)
Metabolic Changes and Microbiome in the Context of Nervous System Injury
Discussion Leaders
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Alyson Fournier (McGill University, Canada)
Speakers
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Zu-Hang Sheng (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH, USA)
Neurocircuitry and Neurostimulation After Spinal Cord Injury
Discussion Leaders
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Jack Martin (City University of New York School of Medicine, USA)
Speakers
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Polina Anikeeva (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
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Gregoire Courtine (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland)
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Martin Schwab (University of Zurich, Switzerland)
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Aya Takeoka (KU Leuven / VIB, Belgium)
Neurotechnologies and Novel Approaches
Discussion Leaders
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Hongyan Zou (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA)
Speakers
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Madeline Lancaster (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom)
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Jae Lee (University of Miami, USA)
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Joost Verhaagen (Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, The Netherlands)
Cell-Based Strategies for Therapy
Discussion Leaders
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Michael Sofroniew (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
Speakers
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Magdalena Goetz (Biomedical Center Munich, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany)
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Guo-Li Ming (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
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Mark Tuszynski (University of California, San Diego, USA)
Clinical Translation in Spinal Cord Injury
Discussion Leaders
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Jan Schwab (The Ohio State University College of Medicine, USA)
Speakers
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Azad Bonni (F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Switzerland)
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Michael Fehlings (University of Toronto, Canada)
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Margaret Purcell (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom)
