2026 Cardiac Regulatory Mechanisms Gordon Research Conference and Gordon Research Seminar

About This Grant

Project Summary Over the past decade, advances in early detection and diagnosis have begun to reveal the vast complexity of the primary etiologies that drive pathogenic cardiac remodeling and result in end-stage heart disease, an enduring health burden in the United States and throughout the world. While current treatments focus on the late stages of disease, where morphology, function and outcomes are often highly similar, there is growing evidence that improving patient care and management will require coupling early diagnoses to specific, targeted therapies that alter the natural history of these progressive and often devastating disorders. The development of these targeted therapies will require new ideas, new methodologies, and new collaborations between basic and clinical scientists from disparate fields of cardiovascular research. The 2026 Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Cardiac Regulatory Mechanisms is the premier conference centered on the fundamental, basic mechanisms that control normal cardiac function and how these systems are altered in the context of pathogenic processes, resulting in a broad range of cardiovascular disease states. The 2026 GRC and its integrated Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) is organized by and for early career scientists and will focus on how the discovery of fundamental molecular processes, mediated in part by inter-organ crosstalk, can be leveraged for therapeutic intervention for cardiac disease, hence the subtitle “Molecular and Systems Biology Approaches to Cardiac Remodeling and Heart Failure”. The subjects included in the program cover the latest advances in understanding cardiac function and dysfunction in the areas of heart failure, cardiac regeneration, inflammation, inter-organ crosstalk, electrical remodeling, metabolic regulation, and cytoskeletal structural dynamics. The main objectives of the GRC/GRS are 1) to disseminate the latest information and technological advances in Cardiac Regulatory Mechanisms pertinent to novel therapeutic interventions for heart disease; 2) to engage, motivate, and mentor the next generation of basic and physician-scientists in cardiovascular research and 3) to stimulate collaboration and multidisciplinary communication in the environment unique to the Gordon Research Conferences, which features rigorous discussions of unpublished, controversial, or paradigm–challenging data.