back row (left to right): USC FRI Directors Kelvin J. A. Davies and Enrique Cadenas; USC-FRI members Helen Johnston-Carey, Qi (Jackey) Jia, Fei Yin, Zhigang Liu, and Ishan Patil. Front row (left to right): USC-FRI members Aarti Mishra, Rachel Raynes, Mafalda Cacciottolo, Kyung Kim, Anna Papinska, Laura Corrales-Diaz Pomatto, Jacqueline Lo, and Maira Soto. (Photo by Veronica Slavin of Photography By Design.)
Sixteen USC professors, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students attended the 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Oxidative Stress & Disease supported by the USC Free Radical Institute (FRI) March 1-6 in Ventura, Calif.
The Gordon Research Conferences (GRCs) provide an international forum for the presentation and discussion of frontier research in the biological, chemical, and physical sciences as well as their related technologies. GRCs are different from other scientific conferences because they offer a unique ambience favoring discussions and exchange of opinions between junior and senior researchers, industry, and academia. Scientists with common professional interests come together for a full week of intense discussion and examination of the most advanced aspects of their field.
The 2015 GRC on Oxidative Stress and Disease, one of many GRCs offered in different fields this year, focused on how changes in redox signaling trigger and participate in age-related diseases. The emerging role of redox signaling dysfunction is gaining significant support in the fields of aging and age-related disease—diabetes, ocular dysfunction, stroke, heart disease, cancer, etc.—and challenges the current paradigm that damage by reactive oxygen and nitrogen species to macromolecules is the primary pathologic event that drives aging.
The conference’s invited keynote speakers included USC FRI Director Kelvin J. A. Davies, Dean of Faculty and Research at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology; FRI Co-Director and USC School of Pharmacy Professor Enrique Cadenas; and USC Leonard Davis School Dean Pinchas Cohen. In addition, USC Leonard Davis postdoctoral scholar Rachel Raynes and PhD student Laura C. D. Pomatto were both selected to give oral presentations at the meeting, and 13 posters were presented by other USC post-doctoral fellows and students.
“The program drew from a diverse field of both well-established and emerging scientists and clinicians from across the globe who are at the forefront of their field,” Davies said. “USC FRI scientists have long been considered a major force in the free radical and oxidative stress field and, as we were by far the single largest group at the meeting, this preeminent position was further solidified.”
