Maintenance and Remodeling of the Neuromuscular Junction in Health and Disease

Symposium — Sunday, April 22, 2024 — 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM — Convention Center, Room 22
Muscle Biology Group — Chair: Vladimir Ljubicic — Co-Chair:

The maintenance and remodelling of the neuromuscular junction (NMJ) is critical in health and disease. The goal of this symposium is to enhance our understanding of the processes, be they inherited or acquired, which mediate NMJ structure and function. The combined expertise of our international group of invited speakers covers a wide breadth of topics related to this important site of neuromuscular communication. Distinguished investigators Dr. Russell Hepple and Dr. Michael Deschenes will discuss the plasticity of the NMJ during the adaptive aging process, as well as in response to alterations in activity levels. Emerging researchers Dr. Lyndsay Murray and Dr. Joe Chakkalakal will examine the regulation of NMJ remodelling in disease states, including throughout the cyclical degeneration/regeneration events that accompany various neuromuscular disorders. Insights of NMJ biology derived from complementary methods of investigation, such as motoneuron and muscle cell cultures, pre-clinical rodent models, as well as human participants, will be shared. Further, the speakers will emphasize the cellular and molecular mechanisms governing NMJ maintenance and plasticity. Our symposium will underscore the importance of the NMJ in health and disease and highlight new research directions for NMJ biology on the horizon.

Speakers

• Aging Muscle and Chronic Tobacco Smoke Exposure: Crossing Swords at the Neuromuscular Junction.
  Russell Hepple — Department of Physical Therapy, University of Florida


• Factors regulating differential neuromuscular junction vulnerability in motor neuron diseases.
  Lyndsay Murray — Centre for Integrative Physiology, University of Edinburgh


• Interrelationships between age-related skeletal muscle stem cell and neuromuscular junction decline.
  Joe Chakkalakal — Department of Orthopaedics, University of Rochester


• Activity-induced plasticity of the NMJ.
  Michael Deschenes — Kinesiology & Health Sciences Department, College of William and Mary


• CHAIR
  Vladimir Ljubicic —