Tight Junctions 2023 - 4th-8th June 2023 - Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology

Tight Junctions, from Structure and Development to Therapeutics

Symposium overview

Tight junctions (TJs) are a hallmark of epithelial and endothelial tissues, where they play a major role in barrier function. Recently, exciting discoveries have begun to clarify how tight junction (TJ) self-assemble, what is the structural basis for TJ barrier selectivity and how TJs are implicated in development and disease. These discoveries were driven by new technological developments in the fields of imaging, structural biology, membrane biophysics, and animal models. There is growing excitement and recognition that we are beginning to understand the interplay between structure and functions of TJs, from development to therapeutics. The goal of this Workshop is to collect together the communities of TJ researchers from Europe, USA and Japan, with the aim of fostering information exchange and generation of new ideas and collaborations on a wide range of cutting-edge topics, ranging from structural biochemistry and computational analysis of the functions of key TJ proteins, to the role of TJs from development to therapeutics. By bringing together scientists from different fields with complementary state of the art expertise we aim to build new connections between world scientists, with the goal of advancing our mechanistic understanding of TJ biology and their implications in physiology and pathology.