The 2012 Gordon Conference on "Reprogramming Cell Fate" will present cutting-edge research on the molecular and cellular aspects of reprogramming to pluripotency and lineage conversion and applications of reprogrammed cells. Somatic cell nuclear transfer (or cloning) showed that somatic nuclei can be reprogrammed to a primitive state to generate new embryos. Many groups focus on the mechanisms by which the donor nucleus is reprogrammed in the recipient ovum to understand pluripotency. Recently, it was shown that forced expression of key transcription factors that are important for maintaining pluripotent stem cells can cause somatic cells to be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state. Now known as induced pluripotency, this method has tremendous potential to be applied for patient-specific stem cell therapies and disease studies and thus garners extraordinary attention. More recently, several groups have shown that expression of various combinations of transcription factors can reprogram somatic cells directly to alternative somatic fates directly, without passing through a pluripotent intermediate. In the future, it will be important to reveal opportunities and limits of each of these reprogramming processes. Before any of these methods are applied in clinical settings, it is vital that the basic issues surrounding these various types of reprogrammed cells are settled. As these newly reprogrammed cells have only recently been generated, relatively little is known about their origins, their epigenetic state, their differentiation potential etc. This conference therefore is an ideal setting for discourse on not only mechanisms of reprogramming, but a detailed examination of reprogrammed cells, their developmental and functional potential, and the relevance of reprogramming to natural phenomena, and their clinical potential.

Our 2012 conference will be the first Gordon Conference on this topic and will be held at the beautiful Hotel Galvez. The Conference will bring together a collection of investigators who are at the forefront of the field, and will provide opportunities for junior scientists and graduate students to present their work in poster format and exchange ideas with leaders in the field. Some poster presenters will be selected for short talks. We hope that a collegial atmosphere, with defined discussion sessions as well as opportunities for informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, will provide an avenue for scientists from different disciplines to brainstorm and promote cross-disciplinary collaborations in the various research areas represented.

Confirmed speakers include Sir John Gurdon, Alex Meissner, Stephen Tapscott, Oliver Hobert, Hans Scholer, Joanna Wysocka, Marius Wernig, Andras Nagy, Lorenz Studer, Mick Bhatia, Jose Silva, Magdalena Goetz, Duanqing Pei, Ken Zaret, Azim Surani, Ricardo Dolmetsch, Ihor Lemischka, Hanna Mikkola, Joe Wu, Dino Morvinski, Flaminia Talos, Shila Mekhoubad, Jianlong Wang and Rupa Sridharan.