Project Summary:
Over the past decade, advances in early detection and diagnosis have begun to reveal the vast complexity of
the primary etiologies that drive pathogenic cardiac remodeling and result in end-stage heart disease, an
enduring health burden in the United States and throughout the world. While current treatments focus on the
late stages of disease, where morphology, function and outcomes are often highly similar, there is growing
evidence that improving patient care and management will require coupling early diagnoses to specific,
targeted therapies that alter the natural history of these progressive and often devastating disorders. The
development of these targeted therapies will require new ideas, new methodologies, and new collaborations
between basic and clinical scientists from disparate fields of cardiovascular research. The 2024 Gordon
Research Conference (GRC) on Cardiac Regulatory Mechanisms is the premier conference centered on the
fundamental, basic mechanisms that control normal cardiac function and how these systems are precisely
altered in the context of pathogenic processes, resulting in a broad range of cardiovascular disease states. The
2024 GRC and its integrated Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) is organized by and for early career scientists
and will focus on how the discovery of fundamental molecular processes can be leveraged for therapeutic
intervention using approaches that encompass multiple levels of experimental resolution, hence the subtitle
“Translating Fundamental Discoveries into Novel Therapeutics”. The subjects included in the program cover
the latest advances in understanding cardiac function and dysfunction in the areas of heart failure, cardiac
regeneration, inflammation, inter-organ crosstalk, calcium regulation, metabolic regulation, and myocellular
structural dynamics. The main objectives of the GRC/GRS are 1) to disseminate the latest information and
technological advances in Cardiac Regulatory Mechanisms pertinent to novel therapeutic interventions for
heart disease; 2) to engage, motivate, and mentor the next generation of basic and physician-scientists in
cardiovascular research and 3) to stimulate collaboration and multidisciplinary communication in the inclusive
environment unique to the Gordon Research Conferences, which features rigorous discussions of unpublished,
controversial, or paradigm–challenging data.