Conference Summary
This is not another general ER meeting: it is a tightly focused, neurodegeneration-centered conference designed to connect clinically driven human datasets with cutting-edge ER mechanism biology to accelerate causal, translational progress.

Evidence implicating endoplasmic reticulum (ER) dysfunction in dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases has reached a tipping point, but the field remains split between two partially disconnected communities: (i) clinically oriented and translational investigators generating patient, genetic, and biomarker-driven datasets with growing ER-linked signals, and (ii) basic ER biologists discovering new regulatory layers of ER stress signaling, proteostasis control, calcium homeostasis, and ER shaping/morphogenesis. A focused meeting is needed now to bridge these groups, align conceptual frameworks and standards, and accelerate mechanistic and therapeutic translation, with speakers from both communities selected specifically for how directly their work advances this neurodegeneration-centered, mechanism-to-translation agenda. The goal is to bring these communities into sustained, mechanism-forward dialogue to define which ER pathway states are causal, compensatory, or resilience-promoting across cell types and disease stages and identify the most actionable ER-centered intervention points for neurodegeneration.