When Richard Kriwacki, PhD, a Structural Biology faculty member at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, became involved with Telluride Science a decade ago, he had no idea it would lead him to a new field of science, Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation (LLPS). Telluride Science’s 2017 Intrinsically Disordered Protein (IDP) workshop, which Kriwacki co-organized, helped to drive the creation of this emerging field of research, which has exploded in recent years and has attracted some of the brightest minds in the science world.
LLPS—which also causes olive oil molecules to form round droplets in vinaigrette—is a previously overlooked mechanism that mediates the assembly of many different organelles (small “organ-like” sub-structures inside cells that perform diverse biological functions). What’s important to know is that the alteration of existing organelles and/or the new formation of abnormal organelles, can, when in nerve cells, cause various neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and ALS, and can, when in blood cells, cause various adult and pediatric cancers. This field has attracted interest from pharmaceutical and bio tech companies who see opportunities to develop completely novel therapeutics that counteract the changes, serving to blunt or reverse the onset of disease.
This March, Kriwacki and fellow scientist Shana Elbaum Garfinkle, are hosting the first-ever Telluride Science workshop that delves into the field of LLPS. Their “Phase Separation in Biology and Disease” workshop will be attended by the emerging leaders in the field as well as three representatives from bio tech companies. Research in LLPS could potentially lead to new ways to treat or cure cancer as well as neurodegenerative diseases.
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