Neurodegenerative Diseases: The Molecular and Cellular Basis for Neurodegeneration (F2) 2011

Neurodegenerative diseases are chronic age-dependent progressive disorders that are substantial and growing health problems, which exert a tremendous toll on the patient, family, health system and society as a whole. Accordingly, there is an urgent need to identify therapies that slow and/or reverse the progression of these disorders. Research in neurodegenerative disorders is providing tremendous advances in the molecular understanding of these disorders. New insights in cell biology, biochemistry, genomics and proteomics into these illnesses are leading to mechanism based therapies and new tools and biomarkers to study disease progression and therapeutic efficacy. In this meeting an emphasis will be placed on understanding new molecular and common mechanisms of disease in Alzheimer s disease (AD), Parkinson s disease (PD), triple repeat diseases, frontotemporal lobar dementia and others.