Plenary Lecture ¥° November 6Mon, 15:40-16:30, Tamna hall A
Genes from the Fountain of Youth
Organizer & Chair: Seung-Jae Lee, Ph.D. (KAIST, Korea)
Moderator: Junil Kim, Ph.D. (Soongsil University, Korea)
Cynthia Kenyon¡¯s 1993 discovery that a single-gene mutation could double the lifespan of healthy, fertile C. elegans roundworms sparked an intensive study of the molecular biology of aging. Her studies showed that the aging process is not random and haphazard, as previously thought, but instead is subject to active genetic regulation. Her work led to the realization that a universal endocrine network influences the rate of aging in many organisms, possibly including humans.
Dr. Kenyon graduated valedictorian in chemistry and biochemistry from the University of Georgia in 1976. She received her PhD with Graham Walker at MIT, where she was the first to look for genes based on their expression patterns, discovering a transcriptional circuit for the bacterial DNA damage response. She joined Sydney Brenner¡¯s lab as a postdoc to study C. elegans developmental pattern formation, ultimately discovering and delineating, as a faculty member at UCSF, highly conserved axial patterning mechanisms that were much more ancient than previously thought. At UCSF, she was the Herbert Boyer Distinguished Professor.
Dr. Kenyon is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. She is an American Cancer Society Professor. She was president of the Genetics Society of America in 2003 and has received many scientific awards. In 2014, Cynthia become Vice President of Aging Research at Calico Life Sciences, Google¡¯s new basic-research and drug-development company (Art Levinson, CEO)
whose mission is to gain a deep, actionable understanding of aging, ultimately allowing us to maintain healthy youthfulness and high quality of life as we age.
Plenary Lecture ¥± November 7Tue, 11:40-12:30, Tamna hall A
How do you feel? The molecules that sense touch
Plenary Lecture ¥² November 7Tue, 17:30-18:20, Tamna hall A
A journey from phosphotyrosine to phosphohistidine and what it has revealed about cancer mechanisms
Organizer & Chair : Young-Joon SURH, Ph.D. (Seoul National University, Korea)
Moderator: Kyung-min Lee, Ph.D. (Hanyang University, Korea)
Tony Hunter received his BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge, and did postdoctoral studies at the Salk Institute. Since 1975 he has been on the faculty of the Salk Institute, where he is the Renato Dulbecco Chair. In 1979, through his work on tumor viruses, he discovered a new class of protein kinases that phosphorylate tyrosine in proteins, establishing that dysregulated tyrosine phosphorylation by an activated tyrosine kinase can cause cancer. Tyrosine phosphorylation is a reversible protein modification essential for the regulation of a wide variety of cellular processes in multicellular eukaryotes, including transmembrane signal transduction by surface receptors. Hunter¡¯s work led to the realization that aberrant tyrosine phosphorylation is causal in several types of human cancer, and this has led to the successful development of small molecule inhibitors that target disease-causing tyrosine kinases, known as TKIs, such as GleevecTM.
Hunter has received many awards for his work on tyrosine phosphorylation, including the Sjoberg Prize for Cancer Research, and the Tang Prize for Biopharmaceutical Science, and is a member of the Royal Society of London and the US National Academy of Sciences.
In recent work, he has been studying histidine phosphorylation of proteins, generating monoclonal antibodies specific for the two isoforms of phosphohistidine, which he is using to identify new histidine phosphorylated proteins, and to uncover a possible role for histidine phosphorylation in cancer. He is also investigating the role of stromal cells in pancreatic cancer, discovering that the leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) cytokine secreted by cancer-associated fibroblasts is important for tumor progression.
Plenary Lecture ¥³ November 8Wed, 11:50-12:40, Tamna hall A
Inner workings of microbial ion channels: surprising discoveries and new opportunities
Organizer & Chair : Sung-Yon Kim, Ph.D. (Seoul National University, Korea)
Organizer: Sung-Yon Kim, Ph.D. (Seoul National University, Korea)
Chair: Pann-Ghill Suh, Ph.D. (Korea Brain Research Institute, Korea)
Moderator: Jun Young Hong, Ph.D. (Yonsei University, Korea)
Karl Deisseroth is Professor of Bioengineering, and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, at Stanford, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Deisseroth received his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1992, his PhD from Stanford in 1998, and his MD from Stanford in 2000. Deisseroth then completed his medical internship and adult psychiatry residency at Stanford, and is board-certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He continues as a practicing psychiatrist (inpatient and outpatient) at Stanford with specialization in affective disorders and autism-spectrum disease, employing medications along with neural stimulation. Deisseroth also serves as Director of Undergraduate Education for Bioengineering at Stanford, and is known for providing free educational programs that have disseminated his technologies to thousands of laboratories around the world.
In exploring how properties of the brain arise from activity of its cellular components, Deisseroth has pioneered the basic science discoveries that enabled this goal, including resolving the structural and functional mysteries of natural light-gated ion channels, and discovery of the neural cell types and connections that cause adaptive and maladaptive behavior. Along the way, over the last 17 years, his laboratory has created and developed technologies for observing and controlling biological systems (like the brain) at high resolution, while maintaining these systems in the intact state; these technologies include optogenetics, hydrogel-tissue chemistry, and a broad range of enabling methods.
Deisseroth has also published a book of literary nonfiction, relating the experiences of psychiatric patients to modern neuroscience-Projections (Penguin Random House) in 2021.
Deisseroth was elected to the US National Academy of Medicine in 2010, to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2012, and to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2019. For his work, Deisseroth has received the 2010 Nakasone Prize, 2012 Perl Prize, 2013 Lounsbery Prize, 2013 Gabbay Prize, 2013 BRAIN Prize, 2014 Dickson Prize in Science, 2014 Keio Prize, 2015 Breakthrough Prize, 2015 Lurie Prize, 2015 Albany Prize, 2015 Dickson Prize in Medicine, 2016 BBVA Award, 2017 Massry Prize, 2017 Fresenius Prize, 2018 Gairdner Award, 2018 Kyoto Prize, 2020 Heineken Prize, 2021 Lasker Award, 2022 Horwitz Prize, and 2023 Japan Prize.