2025 Parkinson's Disease Gordon Research Conference and Gordon Research Seminar

Project Summary Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder accompanied by a broad range of motor and non-motor symptoms. It affects approximately 1 million Americans. With the gradual aging of the population in the Western World, the burden of this disease is expected to rise steeply over the next decades. Although there is still much to learn, research in PD is presently making a lot of progress and beginning to shed light on common pathways and mechanisms of pathogenesis and pathophysiology. The 2025 GRC/GRS meeting on PD aims to promote the translation and integration of knowledge across disciplines to accelerate the pace of discovery and its translation to new therapies. This PD GRS/GRC meeting will be held June 8-13 2025 at Waterville Valley in New Hampshire, a readily accessible location 2 hours north of Boston. It will be dedicated to the presentation of new research developments on the pathogenesis, pathophysiology and experimental therapeutics of PD. Based on previous editions of this meeting (2015, 2019 and 2023), we expect 200 attendees (the GRC maximum). Support is requested from the NIH to help cover the registration costs for 20 early-career investigators (PhD students & postdocs). We aim to put together a meeting that will be exemplary in its promotion of discussions and collaborations and that will be interactive and inclusive. This will be promoted by a few key features of the meeting. First, this will be a joint GRS/GRC meeting, the first of which will provide a unique opportunity for students and postdocs to establish a rapport and dialog prior to the GRC. Second, it will be mandatory that all attendees stay the full 5 days of the meeting. Third, the ratio of talks to discussion time will be longer compared to other typical meetings, thus favoring for in depth scientific exchange. Forth, communal dining, afternoon social time and interactive poster sessions, together with the presence of major thought leaders in a non-intimidating, approachable setting will facilitate the development of genuine scientific interactions between participants at all levels of experience. The meeting program was designed with input from a committee of 14 scientists (9 women/5 men) with diverse interests and backgrounds, representing North America, Europe and Oceania. The meeting’s program is intended to provide PD scientists an understanding of state-of-the-art research across disciplines and an appreciation of the critical questions that remain to be addressed. We will actively encourage participant diversity in many domains: career stage, institutional environment, geographical location, sex, age and ethnicity. The GRC preliminary program features females in 50% of speaker/discussion leader roles programmed to date. The proposed program also has strong international representation, with 43% of speakers and Discussion Leaders from outside the US. About 25% of speaking slots assigned so far are filled by junior investigators, and each of the 8 sessions will also have a 10-minute talk by a junior investigator chosen from the submitted poster abstracts.