The Polyamines GRC is a premier, international scientific conference focused on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge and unpublished research, prioritizing time for discussion after each talk and fostering informal interactions among scientists of all career stages. The conference program includes a diverse range of speakers and discussion leaders from institutions and organizations worldwide, concentrating on the latest developments in the field. The conference is five days long and held in a remote location to increase the sense of camaraderie and create scientific communities, with lasting collaborations and friendships. In addition to premier talks, the conference has designated time for poster sessions from individuals of all career stages, and afternoon free time and communal meals allow for informal networking opportunities with leaders in the field.

This 2023 GRC/GRS will focus on the role of polyamines and polyamine-associated pathways in humans, animal models, microorganisms, and plants. Speaker sessions will feature topics on adult and pediatric cancers, medical genetics, aging, pathogens, and plants. Speakers have been chosen to highlight the most recent discoveries related to the biological roles of polyamines and the important clinical trials investigating polyamine-based targeting therapies for the treatment and prevention of cancer, genetic abnormalities, neurodegenerative disorders, and microbial pathogens.

The program will address the rapidly moving research on receptor-regulated calcium signaling and the critical questions that are key to establishing future therapies for cardiovascular, airway, gut, liver, immunoinflammatory, metabolic and neurological disorders. It is the only conference on this important topic that will be convened in 2023.

Conference sessions will present the latest findings and promote discussion on:

• Emerging new technologies to study calcium signaling

• Organellar calcium signaling

• Calcium signaling in metabolism and muscular and cardiovascular systems

• Store operated calcium channels and TRP channels

• Calcium signaling in cancer and the immune system

• Calcium signaling in the nervous system

• Calcium crosstalk with other signaling pathways

• Calcium signaling proteins and regulatory mechanisms

• New and notable session with latest breakthroughs

The conference covers 11 sessions, 33 speakers, 16 junior investigator talks, and four poster sessions. The program includes two Career Development Workshops: one for postdocs and early career scientists about funding opportunities and how to write a successful grant; and a roundtable discussion with individuals from academia, industry, and publishing on the topic of career paths.

Retinal photoreceptor cells provide the critical first steps in vision, transducing incident photons into changes in membrane potential relayed via neural circuits to higher visual centers. Research on photoreceptors and their supporting epithelium, the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), is not only essential for understanding how we see, but it has also advanced knowledge in areas such as G protein signaling, neurophysiology, and protein structure and function.

In addition, fundamental photoreceptor and RPE research has been essential for new insights in the pathobiology of vision loss; blinding diseases like retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration result from photoreceptor degeneration that typically first appears as defects in cell biological and physiological mechanisms of the photoreceptors and/or the adjacent RPE.