Translating Fundamental Discoveries into Novel Therapeutics

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) 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in the inclusive environment unique to the Gordon Research Conferences, which features rigorous discussions of unpublished, controversial, or paradigm–challenging data.