ABSTRACT
Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Advances in Neurodegenerative Disease
Research and Therapy, organized by Drs. Li Gan, Leonard Petrucelli and Morgan H. Sheng. The conference
will be held June 17-21, 2018 at Keystone Resort, Colorado.
As the world population ages, neurodegenerative diseases are becoming the new epidemic in both developed
and developing countries. Progress made in human genetics has revealed increasingly more disease-associated
genes for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative disorders. These discoveries have linked neurodegenerative
diseases with several common key biological processes that have so far been under-studied, including RNA
metabolism, protein trafficking and innate immune responses. By focusing on these emerging areas in
neurodegenerative disease research, this conference seeks to challenge the current research paradigms and to
inspire in-depth discussion and exploration. The program assembles leaders from various fields to facilitate
interactions between groups using diverse approaches, by providing a platform to cross-fertilize ideas and to
encourage new collaborations that could lead to novel mechanisms and therapeutic targets against
neurodegenerative diseases.