Apoptosis and Other forms of Cell Death in the Regulation of Inflammation in Health and Disease

Professor Chris Gregory holds the Chair of Inflammatory Cell Biology and is former Director of the MRC Centre for Inflammation Research, Queen’s Medical Research Institute, University of Edinburgh. He has been a research group leader in the Centre, now relocated to the new Institute for Regeneration and Repair, for 25 years, and has a research track record spanning more than three decades in the field of apoptosis and especially apoptotic cell clearance in cancer. Professor Will Wood holds the Chair in Tissue Regeneration and Repair at the Centre for Inflammation Research within the Institute for Regeneration and Repair at the University of Edinburgh. He has, over the past 20 years, pioneered the use of the Drosophila embryo as a powerful system to live image macrophage behaviour and their response to apoptosis in vivo. Professor Kodi Ravichandran is the Robert L. Kroc Professor of Pathology and Immunology and Chief of the Division of Immunobiology in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He also has an appointment with the VIB-UGent Centre for Inflammation Research and the Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Belgium. Dr. Ravichandran’s research over the past 25 years has focused on mechanisms of efferocytosis, defining molecules and specific pathways involved in apoptotic cell clearance, and how this relates to homeostasis and disease in different tissue contexts.

• Elephants in the room.- Molecular cell biology of apoptosis in health and disease.- Efferocytosis in homeostasis.- Messages from beyond the grave: How can Drosophila help us to understand the consequences of apoptosis.- Metabolic implications of efferocytosis during inflammation.- Apoptosis and cell clearance in skin wound healing.- Of tingible bodies and starry skies: Control of normal and malignant tissues through apoptotic cell-dependent communication (ACDC).- Cell death and infection: Implications for host and microbe.- For better or worse The impact of necrotic cell death modalities.- Entosis in health and disease.