This FASEB Science Research Conference focuses on the TGF-β family of secreted
polypeptides that are important during animal embryogenesis, during tissue specification and
patterning, and during adult life tissue homeostasis. Expansion of this field into unexpected
areas of biology and disease pathogenesis is exemplary, and in part, due to high throughput
efforts that serendipitously bring scientists to the world of TGF-β. All thematic areas have
been carefully selected to fit nicely to the current activities of major pharmaceutical platforms
that aim at exploiting this field for the generation of new diagnostics and therapeutics for a
variety of human disorders. These areas include: signaling networks and crosstalk, stemness
in development and disease, plasticity and morphogenesis in development and disease,
tissue microenvironment dynamics in embryos and disease, homeostatic and metabolic
control of growth and disease, inflammation, vasculature and tissue transformation and
differentiation processes and therapeutic frontiers.
This conference will seek to strengthen interactions between those scientists studying
molecular mechanisms and those studying development and disease, and will attract
scientists from seemingly distant fields, who recently entered the TGF-β field. The conference
program planned so far is truly global and represents the breadth of TGF-β family biology.
The conference program provides significant level of renewal and dives into new areas
of biology and technological fronts, thus providing an inspirational scientific environment
that can foster the future of this field in basic developmental-cell biology and in appliedtranslational
biomedical areas of investigation.