October 5 (Mon) - 7 (Wed), 2020

The cilium plays diverse roles and considered as a clinically important organelle with ciliary dysfunction underlying several human syndromes collective called the ciliopathies. Ciliopathies are associated with several human syndromes and exhibit pleomorphic phenotypes affecting nearly every tissue and organ system. As the cilia have emerged to signaling hub for diverse cellular signaling, this session titled "Cilia signaling and signal perception" will focus on the recent advances in mechanistic insights of the ciliary study.

Most DNA in the genome is considered to be present as a B-form, but number of evidences support that DNA structures are highly polymorphic. Therefore, many sequence-specific noncanonical DNA (ncDNA) or non-B-DNA conformations transiently exist, often in response to changes in the cellular environment or when bound to proteins. A number of ncDNA structures, including triplexes, left-handed DNA, bent DNA, cruciforms, nodule DNA, flexible and writhed DNA, G-quartet (tetraplexes), slipped structures, and sticky DNA, have been discovered approximately one new conformation every 3 years for the past 35 years. ncDNAs are involved in various cellular events including chromatin remodeling, replication, transcription and recombination, and thus its presence or mutation is relevant to the various disease including tumors. In addition, it is verified that many genetic diseases are closely related to ncDNA. Therefore, it is considered that regulation of ncDNA formation is crucial to understand its cellular function and to develop a novel strategy for curing the related diseases. In this session current progress on the structure, function and modulation of ncDNA will be introduced.

Organizer & Chair : Kyeong Kyu Kim, Ph.D. (Sungkyunkwan University, Korea)

The microbiome, comprised of the microbiota and its collective genomes called the metagenome, is an integral part of our body. Members of the microbiota include bacteria, archaea, microbial eukaryotes (protists, fungi, etc.), and respective viruses. Recent studies reveal that a myriad of members, mutualistic, commensal, or pathogenic, of the human microbiome play pivotal roles in health and disease by producing diverse macromolecules and metabolites. Not only are they important in nutrient digestion and gastrointestinal health, but they are also intimately and intricately involved in metabolism, immunity, development, circulation, and behavior, and modulate them in many ways. Some of the diseases affected by the microbiome include metabolic diseases (obesity, type 2 diabetes), immune-related diseases (inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis), gastrointestinal diseases, liver diseases, cardiovascular disease, various cancers, and neural/mental disorders. In the session, recent progress and achievements in human microbiome research and the consequent discovery of pharmabiotics candidates that are derived from the human microbiome and have pharmacological efficacy for maintaining health or treating diseases will be reported and prospects for further commercial development of probiotics and pharmabiotics, natural or genetically modified, will be discussed.

Organizer & Chair : Jihyun F. Kim, Ph.D. (Yonsei University, Korea)

Histone modifications are intimately associated with cellular differentiation and senescence whose abnormal regulation underlies cancer incidence and progression. Accumulating evidence have shown that dysregulation of histone modification is critical for cancer development. In order to pave the way for overcoming cancer, this symposium will discuss recent progression on molecular details of histone modification-mediated regulation of senescence and cancer.

Recent progress in sequencing technology empower scientists to accelerate cancer science. These data accelerate cancer science by providing multi-layered data sets from genomics to phenomics. Here we invited most well-known scientists from data-driven cancer science field who transformed real world data to molecular level. We will provide evidence that integration of multi-omics data can solve the complexity of cancer heterogeneity and disease progression.

Subcellular organelles including ER, mitochondria, lysosomes, and peroxisomes have intensively been studied individually as well as interactively. Among these, peroxisomes and their association to other organelles have been focused to reveal their specific roles in cellular metabolism and thus to answer human diseases wherein the involvement of the organelle has been assumed. This session will present cutting-edge research data from the studies of peroxisome and related organelles that were conducted in leading laboratories in Korea in addition to from a worldrenowned laboratory. Specifically, we will focus on novel metabolic roles of peroxisomes in the development of human diseases.

Plants influence significantly in our lives as a source of food and medicine as well as industrial materials. Plant scientists are trying to effectively produce safe and sustainable food, feed, and food ingredients using precision breeding techniques, and also produce biobetter pharmaceutical proteins from plants (the term biobetter refers to a recombinant protein drug that is in the same class as an existing biopharmaceutical but is not identical; it is improved over the original). In this symposium, excellent scientists will present their research on current advances in applied plant science, such as the green vaccine, plant-derived biobetter medicinal protein, molecular breeding for phytochemical production, and genome editing for precision breeding.

Transposable elements also known as "jumping genes" or transposons, are sequences of DNA that move (or jump) from one location in the genome to another. Transposable elements have dynamically moved and changed genomes to affect evolution and diseases significantly. This symposium deals with recent studies about Transposable elements from evolution to diseases.

To be or not to be, that is an important issue in our healthy life. There are very interesting connections between cell death and metabolism but still are elusive. In this symposium you can meet four excellent international scientists (from UK and Korea) to present the most recent studies on mammalian cellular homeostasis regulators in metabolism, cell death and metabolic diseases.

Understanding how cellular and synaptic mechanisms within neural circuits produce reward & addiction behaviors is a fundamental goal of neuroscience. To achieve that goal, we need deep appreciation of these behavior as well as a detailed knowledge of the underlying mechanisms. This symposium will provide the field of reward & addiction research a unique opportunity to meet colleagues, to nurture young investigators, to drive a diverse work force in the field, and to promote advances in the field toward new and definitive treatments of the related disorders.

Cells recognize various signals from outside and induce diverse cellular signaling pathways. Mis regulation of cellular signaling steps leads to human diseases such as cancers. Wnt and Hippo signalings are key signaling pathways for the maintenance of cellular homeostasis. In this session, current aspects of Wnt and Hippo signalings will be discussed.

With advancement of nucleic acid science, convergence of basic research on nucleic acid and biomedical science has provided the basis, for various breakthroughs and follow-up applications of nucleic acid-based medicine. This new advancement is becoming increasingly relevant to our lives. This session will look into recent translational research and applications in nucleic acid-based therapeutics in the health problem. In particular, this session will provide a successful example of translational research using nucleic acid-based therapeutics in health problems. From this session, audience can easily follow-up recent innovative researches and applications in the fields of nucleic acid-based therapeutics.

Plants face various biotic and abiotic stresses. In order to protect themselves from these stresses, plants have developed diverse and complex cellular mechanisms. The various aspects of molecular dynamics between plants and environmental stresses will be presented. At the Plant Stress Biology session of KSMCB 2020, the most recent progress on our understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which plants confer resistance to various stresses and pathogens manipulate host defense will be introduced by internationally recognized scientists. Presentations at the Plant Stress Biology session will include molecular genetics, epigenetics and physiology of different model systems of the plant-biotic/abiotic interactions.

Cells are continuously exposed to various intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli which might cause cellular dysfunction or even death. Cells evolutionally develop defense system to cope with these stresses to restore their functions or to decide to die, which collectively called stress response. The cellular responses might originate from various organelles including endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, and lysosome. Given the significant implications of cellular stress responses to human physiology and diseases, we especially focus on the cellular stress response originated from the organelles and the interplay between these responses that ultimately determine the fate of the stressed cells.

Aging is one of the most complex biological processes yet to be poorly understood. Aging is a common risk factor for various chronic diseases such as hypertension, cancer, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. Korea experiences the world's fastest transition to oldest society, with expecting to become super-aged society in 2025. Also as with long life expectancy, onset of chronic diseases and medical burden are lowering the quality of life in the elderly world-wide. In last decades, several interventions against aging and aging-associated diseases (AAD) were reported such as anti-aging plasma proteins, senolytic chemicals and potential dietary restriction mimetics. These suggest that dream to live longer without chronic diseases can come true in near future. This Aging Symposium aims to share the latest knowledge and trends in the aging research areas from basic science to intervention for AADs. Since senescence cells (SC) were known to cause organismal aging and the clearance of SC ameliorate AADs and extend the lifespan, it is fast growing research subjects in aging.

This session is composed of 4 speakers who investigate various areas of epigenetic regulation aiming to present to the audience how cellular or organismal functions can be mediated by broad spectrum of epigenetic mechanism. The covered topics include epitranscriptome, chromatin- mediated gene regulation, non-coding RNA.

CRISPR-Cas, a prokaryotic adaptive immune system, has been harnessed for genome editing in various species and cell types, including human cells. This session will cover various applications of CRISPR system and its variations.

Cells have evolved stringent protein quality-control equipment for maintenance of protein homeostasis, also referred to as proteostasis. Proteostasis is ensured by a complex network of mechanisms by which protein folding, concentration, localization and association with other molecules can be monitored from synthesis to degradation of proteins. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) are one of the protein quality-control machineries to ensure proteostasis and have essential roles in a wide variety of cellular activities, including protein translation and degradation, control of cell cycle, cell fate decisions, signal transduction, stress responses and cell-to-cell communications. Intriguingly, a failure in the maintenance of proteostasis is closely associated with various human diseases. In this symposium, outstanding scientist from USA will present his recent work to understand how to correct them. Intriguingly, he will focus on pathways that are engaged in the control of anti-tumor immunity by PTM, which define cancer responsiveness to external and internal stress. Three leading scientists from Korea will present their recent works on biochemical mechanisms and pharmaceutical means of N-degron pathway (Yong Tae Kwon), targeted protein degradation (Hyun-Suk Lim) and modulation of the proteolytic machinery for proteostasis (Byung-Hoon Lee), followed by a young investigator's presentation. Therefore, this symposium will cover outstanding progresses to explore molecular mechanisms by which proteostasis can be maintained, to determine the relationship between proteostasis and pathogenesis of human diseases and eventually to contribute to therapeutic interventions in human diseases.

Deep learning is rapidly advancing many areas of science and technology with success stories in image, text, voice and video recognition, robotics, and autonomous driving. Deep learning methods are part of artificial intelligence (AI) and more specifically representation learning algorithms that attempt to extract and organize discriminative information from diverse large datasets. Applications of deep-learning techniques for modelling complex bioactivity data are beginning to burgeon, but are mostly restricted to the fields of non-communicable, chronic, and congenital rare genetic disorders. To date there are just a few examples applying such techniques to the benefit of diagnostics, and therapeutics for infectious disease. Recognising that these methods are unavoidable for state-of-the-art systems level approaches to biology, we showcase speakers in a session aiming to stimulate how we think of deep learning as a tool for studies in infection and anti-microbial resistance.

Glycobiology is the study of the structure, biosynthesis, biology, and evolution of glycans (also called carbohydrates, saccharides, or sugar chains) that are widely distributed in nature in all living life forms and of the proteins that recognize them. Glycans are one of the four main families of organic molecules of cells with nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids. Like protein phosphorylation, glycosylation is a metabolic process that alters protein structure and function. Glycans are directly involved in virtually every disease affecting humankind, including inflammation, infectious disease, cancer, diabetes, and neurodegeneration. In this symposium, we will introduce novel findings in the field of glycoscience and further discuss the importance of glycoscience in biology, chemistry, and many other areas.

Various human diseases are closely related to dysregulated metabolism, which often accompanies and is caused by compromised mitochondria. In this symposium, leading scientists will present novel regulatory mechanisms of the mitochondrial functions crucial for maintaining cellular homeostasis, how dysregulated mitochondria perturb cellular metabolic homeostasis to support the onset and progression of the intractable human diseases, and how we target mitochondrial proteins to develop therapeutics.

How specific cell ensemble supports brain function is poorly understood. The purpose of this symposium is to introduce and discuss the recent advances in our understanding of how specific cell ensemble supports memory and memory-guided behavior such as decision making. The researchers who have been actively studying this important topic and published critical papers were invited as a speaker to the symposium. The talks in this session will provide research data that address such important question.

This session compose: (I) PD-1 related immunoediting in cancer cells (ii) breast cancer cells, (III) CAR-T cells response (IV) GBM (V) understanding of the NK cell therapy and & tumor microenvironment (TME). The tumor microenvironment is a heterogeneous tissue that in addition to tumor cells, contain tumor-associated cell types such as immune cells, fibroblasts, and endothelial cells. Tumor growth creates hypoxia, oxidative stress and acidosis within the TME triggering an adjustment of the extracellular matrix (ECM), a response from neighbor stromal cells (e.g., fibroblasts) and immune cells (lymphocytes and macrophages), inducing angiogenesis and, ultimately, resulting in metastasis. And also, increased understanding of the T, NK cell response to TME has provided a better nderstanding of their impaired function in tumors which may aid in the development of novel immunotherapeutic strategies to enhance T, NK cell responses in cancer patients.

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) are not only the important cell source for regenerative medicine but also for disease modeling due to their pluripotency. Establishment of hPSCs with genetic mutations of patients enables the researcher to produce the differentiated cells with pathogenic phenotypes, which would be important cell source for mechanistic study as well as cellular platform for drug screening. This section will cover the recent advance of stem cell based disease modeling and show the future direction in this field of science.