ABSTRACT
Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Lipidomics and Functional Metabolic
Pathways in Disease, organized by Drs. Sarah Spiegel, Charles N. Serhan and Valerie B. O'Donnell. The
conference will be held in Steamboat Springs, Colorado from March 31 – April 4, 2019.
Recently, our understanding of lipid metabolism has significantly advanced, at least in part through applying
state-of-the-art lipidomic mass spectrometry approaches, to cellular, cohort and animal models. A large body
of evidence now exists, demonstrating that bioactive lipids play key roles in regulation of biological processes
important for health and disease. However, lipidomics also reveals major gaps in our knowledge, highlighting
the enormous numbers, functional and structural diversity of bioactive lipids, their interactions, spatial and
temporal changes and the complicated system biology of lipid metabolism. This Keystone Symposia conference
will cover areas of bioactive lipid research that have been particularly impacted by these new technologies, which
we note have the potential to transform precision medicine. This Keystone Symposia conference will cover
recent progress and perspectives in the studies of bioactive lipid metabolic pathways, how these interconnect
and are cross-regulated, and their involvement in the regulation of disease. The conference will bring together
outstanding senior and junior scientists with expertise in functions of bioactive lipids as well as those with a
background in mass spectrometry lipidomics, structural biology, and systems biology of lipids to fill in the gaps
in knowledge. Goals and anticipated outcomes: 1) To summarize new approaches and state of the art mass
spectrometry technology combined with informatics and statistics, in bioactive lipid research and to gain broad
understanding of limitations and potential of these, and their potential application to precision medicine and better
understanding of their functions in diseases; 2) To acquire a broader understanding of how lipidomics can be
integrated with proteomics/genomics and other ‘omics technologies, to develop a systems wide view of the
lipidome; 3) To gain new knowledge in spatial and temporal interactions of bioactive lipids in cellular and
subcellular systems, to better understand their functions in health and diseases; 4) To present recent findings
on the biological importance of newly discovered lipids and their roles in immunity and inflammation.