The new millennium has seen a resurgence in our appreciation of metabolism as a central discipline in our understanding of human health and disease. Although the pathways necessary for ATP production and synthesis of macromolecules (nucleic acids, lipids, and amino acids) were elucidated decades ago, their role in determining cell fate or function has been uncovered only recently.  The discovery that oncogenes and tumour suppressors reprogram nutrient uptake and metabolism in malignant cells has re-energized the field of cancer metabolism and more broadly stimulated a second “golden age” of disease-oriented research in biochemistry. Recent work has also shown that metabolites themselves influence signal transduction and gene expression, indicating a surprising degree of crosstalk between metabolism and other regulatory networks in cells and tissues. Metabolites are also important in communication between cells both within a tissue and systemically throughout the body. At this conference we will discuss the role of metabolism in controlling cell fate and function in multiple contexts including cancer, tissue regeneration, immune responses and aging.

For those interested, this meeting takes place just before the Cell Death, Cell Stress and Metabolism conference, taking place from 27 - 30 May 2019 at the same venue. 

Student Offer

Take advantage of this fantastic opportunity for students! Register an academic at the earlybird rate of $1,655 and bring a student for only $700. Unfortunately, Postdocs are not eligible for this offer. Both registration packages include; accommodation for the 24, 25, 26 May 2019 (on a shared basis for students) and a 24hour all-inclusive food and beverage package for the conference period. Academic registrations must be completed by 17th December 2018. Once registered, please contact Emily Bicknell to obtain a special registration link for your student.

Confirmed Invited Speakers -

Janelle Ayres (Salk Institute)
'METABOLIC ADAPTATIONS IN HOST-MICROBE INTERACTIONS'
Kivanc Birsoy (Rockefeller University)
'IDENTIFICATION OF CANCER NUTRIENT DEPENDENCIES'
Edward Chouchani (Harvard Medical School / Dana-Farber Cancer Institute)
'WHY SUCCINATE?  A UNIFYING MECHANISM FOR SYSTEMIC BIOENERGETIC REGULATION'
Heather Christofk (University of California, Los Angeles)
'METABOLIC TRANSITIONS IN CANCER: LESSONS FROM VIRAL INFECTION'
Maralice Conacci-Sorrell (UT Southwestern Medical Center)
Andy Dillin (UC Berkeley)
'CNS CONTROL OF PERIPHERAL METABOLISM AND AGING'
Gerard Evan (University of Cambridge)
Mark Febbraio (Monash University)
'TREATMENT OF TYPE 2 DIABETES AND AGE RELATED SARCOPENIA WITH THE DESIGNER CYTOKINE IC7FC’
Douglas Green (St. Jude Children's Research Hospital)
'SEPARATED AT BIRTH: METABOLISM AND CELL FATE IN T CELL ASYMMETRIC DIVISION'
Marcia Haigis (Harvard Medical School)
'TARGETING TUMOR AND IMMUNE METABOLISM IN THE TUMOR MICROENVIRONMENT'
Russell Jones (McGill University)
'ESSENTIAL NUTRIENTS FOR T CELL FUNCTION'
Susan Kaech (Salk Institute)
Brendan Manning (Harvard T.H. Chan)
'METABOLIC EFFECTORS OF THE PI3K-mTOR SIGNALING NETWORK'
Christian Metallo (UC San Diego)
'AMINO ACID AND LIPID METABOLISM CONVERGE TO INFLUENCE DISEASE PROGRESSION'
Thales Papagiannakopoulos (NYU School of Medicine)
'IDENTIFYING NOVEL METABOLIC DEPENDENCIES IN LUNG CANCER'
Erika Pearce (Max Planck Institute)
'T-CELL METABOLISM'
Jared Rutter (University of Utah)
'MITOCHONDRIA, METABOLISM AND CELLULAR DECISIONS'
David Sabatini (Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research)
'mTOR AND LYSOSOMES IN GROWTH CONTROL'
Gerald Shadel (Salk Insititute)
'ADAPTIVE RESPONSES TO MITOCHONDRIAL STRESS'
Celeste Simon (University of Pennsylvania)
'METABOLIC CROSSTALK IN THE TUMOR MICROENVIRONMENT'
Poul Sorensen (The University of British Colombia)
'SARCOMA CELLS HIGH-JACK AMINO ACID TRANSPORTERS FOR REDOX BALANCE'
Matthew Vander Heiden (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
'METABOLIC LIMITATIONS OF CANCER CELL PROLIFERATION'
Claudio Villanueva (The University of Utah)
'ADIPOSE-LIVER CROSSTALK AND ADAPTIVE THERMOGENESIS'

Target Audience

We anticipate representation from researchers interested in connecting metabolism to cancer, inflammatory diseases, stem cells and aging in both academia and the biotech/pharma industries. Interested researchers need to be on top of these interconnected fields and will want to participate in an international meeting serving as platform for presentation and discussion of the most up-to-date preclinical and clinical work emerging from them.

Educational Need

Despite more than a century of research in the structure and organization of metabolic pathways, modern approaches in metabolic analysis have been relatively slow to disseminate throughout the biomedical research community. There are two reasons for this bottleneck: 1) the huge amount of pre-existing literature on metabolism dissuades many researchers from entering the field; and 2) the level of expertise required to perform cutting-edge metabolic research is deemed to be too high for non-specialists. This conference will highlight specific areas of metabolism for which clear evidence of influence over cell fate decisions and disease mechanisms now exists, with the goal of emphasizing the most important areas of metabolism for audience members with relatively little background in the field. We will also choose speakers with the ability to clearly communicate a broad range of experimental approaches to help interested investigators develop strategies to implement these techniques in their own laboratories. We believe that the size and format of Fusion conferences will stimulate extensive crosstalk among experts and non-experts in this complex but rapidly accelerating field.