International Conference on “Neurotrophic Factors and Neurodegenerative Disorders; Current Advances and Future Perspectives”

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We kindly invite you to the conference entitled “Neurotrophic Factors and Neurodegenerative Disorders; Current Advances and Future Perspectives” that will be organised in the context of the “EuroNeurotrophin” project by FORTH, in Crete, on August 27th-29th 2021.

The Conference will be delivered as a virtual event and registration is free of charge.
Neurodegenerative diseases (ND), like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis and motor neuron disease, are on the rise worldwide.  Alzheimer’s disease alone affects 36 million people in the world and 7 million in Europe. The economic burden for ND exceeds 724 billion € and it will become a trillion euros by 2019. Currently, there is no cure for any ND and most of the available drugs fail to tackle ND pathogenesis.

Neurotrophins are a family of closely related secreted proteins that have been shown to control a number of aspects of survival, development and function of neurons both in the central and the peripheral nervous systems.

Preclinical studies point to the therapeutic potential of neurotrophins in preventing or slowing the progression of ND. Thus, neurotrophins have been proposed as therapeutic agents for neurodegenerative diseases.

However, the poor pharmacokinetic properties of neurotrophins, mainly because of their sensitivity to proteolysis, restricted penetration of the blood–brain barrier, and limited ability to diffuse in tissues, render their use as drugs prohibitive.

The EuroNeurotrophin project aims to address the major limitations of neurotrophins by developing novel small molecule, neurotrophin mimetics  with favourable profiles of stability, tissue penetration and targeted biological actions.

The EuroNeurotrophin project is the first European consortium to study small molecule neurotrophin mimetics (synthetic or natural) in depth, use them as molecular probes to interrogate neurotrophins, and emphasise their clinical translation.
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Visit the conference page to register and for more details.

We look forward to seeing you online in August!

Session topics

• In silico and structural biology studies of neurotrophin receptors
• Medicinal Chemistry-Neurotrophin Mimetics
• Neurotrophins and neurological diseases: from molecular mechanisms to  therapeutic potential
• The neurogenic potential of neurotrophins
• Novel therapeutic approaches for neurodegenerative diseases
• Development of novel technologies for neurotrophin testing