Turning (Environmental) Threats/Pollutants in Chronic Disorders into Patient Value: Novel Insights into Damage Control
17 October 2024 | 14:00 - 15:15

Exposure to environmental pollutants contributes to diverse disease pathology including pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections, cancer and stroke. Pollutants entry can occur through inhalation, traversing endothelial and epithelial barriers, and crossing the blood-brain barrier, leading to a wide distribution throughout the human body via systemic circulation. Pollutants cause cellular damage by overarching mechanisms encompassing oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, (neuro)inflammation, and protein instability. Sensing Pollutant has added a new dimension to disease progression and drug failure. Understanding their molecular pathways and potential receptor binding or signaling could contribute to ways to combat their detrimental effects.

In this session, we should aim to highlight molecular mechanisms of target interaction. In addition, the session will deliver impact on receptors central to a diverse subset of therapy (such as the beta receptors). Pollutants seemingly bear the potential to act on such receptors in an agonistic, antagonistic, allosteric mode of action. Techniques which we aim to highlight during the session are: cry-EM, metabolomics, state-of-the-art drug screening models, omics technology and artificial intelligence. Our session will be very timely given the increasing climate change and environmental pollution threat. It will serve drug "repurposing" items, to name but a few.

Chair: Martina Schmidt (RUG)

Speakers: Karim Rafie (RUG), Anouk Oldenburger (Novo Nordisk), Gerard van Westen (Leiden University), Carola Voss (Helmholtz Institute)

Turning (Environmental) Threats/Pollutants in Chronic Disorders into Patient Value: Novel Insights into Damage Control17 October 2024 | 14:00 - 15:15

Turning (Environmental) Threats/Pollutants in Chronic Disorders into Patient Value: Novel Insights into Damage Control
17 October 2024 | 14:00 - 15:15