Adult tissues are continuously challenged by injury, infection, inflammation, and metabolic stress. Cumulative damage and unresolved responses to these insults contribute to aging, fibrosis, and cancer. In injured tissue, differentiated cells can activate plasticity programs that can either restore tissue homeostasis or promote persistent pathological states.
 
This conference will uniquely examine cellular plasticity from a tissue- and disease-agnostic perspective. We will explore how adaptive plasticity drives regeneration across organs and organisms, and how maladaptive plasticity contributes to senescence, aging, metaplasia, fibrosis, and cancer. We will examine shared mechanisms of cell-state transitions, including emerging concepts such as paligenosis – the idea that differentiated cells can activate an evolutionarily conserved regenerative program to transiently reacquire progenitor-like properties following injury.
 
Understanding the mechanisms that govern adaptive and maladaptive plasticity is essential for developing therapies that enhance regeneration while preventing age-associated disease and malignant transformation. By bringing together leaders in regeneration, aging biology, epithelial plasticity, stem cell biology, metabolism, inflammation, tissue engineering, spatial biology, and cancer, this conference aims to establish a common conceptual framework for regenerative competence and cell-state decisions following injury while fostering collaborations across traditionally separate fields.

Key Sessions

• Adaptive Plasticity: Mechanisms of Successful Regeneration
• Regenerative Competence During Aging
• Tissue Architecture and Cell-State Decisions
• Cellular Fitness: Metabolism, Proteostasis and Organelle Quality
• Tissue Environment, Inflammation and Plasticity
• When Plasticity Goes Wrong: Fibrosis, Senescence and Cancer

Confirmed Invited Speakers

Maria Alcolea (University of Cambridge)
Kathy DelGiorno (Vanderbilt University)
Bon-Kyoung 'BK' Koo (IBS Center for Genome Engineering)
Ophir Klein (Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences)
Ken Lau (Vanderbilt University)
Joo-Hyeon Lee (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)
Nuno Raimundo (Penn State College of Medicine)
Owen Sansom (Beatson Institute)
Ashley Webb (Buck Institute)

Educational Need

This platform is designed to focus on cell state dynamics and their molecular underpinnings, bringing together scientists interested in how cells choose to switch between senescence, differentiation and quiescence programs. This unique theme will be examined in multiple contexts: stem cells and their niches, cell plasticity, renewal of differentiated tissues during disease or aging. Currentlty, the ageing and regeneration fields have not had joint meetings, which we will address to inspire interdisciplinary exchange between the fields and within the contexts; both in a basic biology and applied or translational sense.

Scientific Objectives

• Establish a conceptual framework for adaptive and maladaptive cellular plasticity as alternative outcomes of tissue injury.
• Define the molecular and cellular determinants of regenerative competence and understand how these are altered during aging.
• Bridge traditionally separate disciplines (regeneration, stem cell biology, aging, metabolism, inflammation, and cancer) to identify shared mechanisms governing cell-state decisions.
• Catalyze new collaborations and emerging research directions that translate mechanistic insights into strategies to improve tissue repair and prevent age-associated disease.

Although the programme has not yet been released, we are able to confirm that the conference should begin no earlier than 14:00 with opening comments on Wdnesday 21 July 2027. The conference will conclude no later than 12:30 on Saturday 24 July 2027.