Conference Summary

Dysregulated cyclic nucleotide signaling contributes to major human pathologies, including neurodegenerative, cardiovascular, respiratory, inflammatory, endocrine, metabolic, reproductive and infectious diseases. Accordingly, the conference will highlight the most significant advances in these fields and will devote a significant part of its program to the presentation of new therapeutic avenues arising from these discoveries. investigators who study regulatory networks of cyclic nucleotide signaling in various tissues in health and disease will focus on the most recent knowledge on the structure and function of cyclic nucleotide effectors and degraders, such as phosphodiesterases, and their organization into macromolecular assemblies driven by scaffolds. 

The enormous number of drugs that have evolved from this field attest to its importance. PDE inhibitors as a treatment for erectile dysfunction are well known, as are drugs that modulate cyclic AMP to treat psoriasis, COPD, cystic fibrosis and most recently, the hugely GLP-1 agonists. Yet we do not fully understand all the mechanisms involved in its actions.