Welcome
After fertilization, a single celled egg undergoes a multitude of cleavages and gradually becomes restricted to give rise to certain types of cells, and eventually forms organs through cell-to-cell and tissue-to-tissue interactions. How the naive stem cells lose their pluripotency and differentiate into highly specialized cells, responding to extracellular environmental cues and how the differentiated cells are self-organized to form complete organs is largely unknown and still includes mysterious problems in biology. When this sophisticated system controlling proliferation, differentiation and migration is defective, we suffer from diseases including malformations, cancer, metabolic disorders, etc. Thanks to the recent advances in stem cell biology, we now have powerful potential technologies to regenerate organs from stem cells. In order to achieve this challenging task to improve our quality of life, however, it is becoming more important for us to learn precisely about how cells and tissues behave in vivo and how the behavior is, and can be, controlled. Fortunately, a number of excellent speakers who are leading the studies of this control process at different levels have accepted to come and discuss current problems and future directions of the field.
On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to invite all of you to the 16th ISD Conference and hope you will enjoy stimulating science as well as the beauty of the ancient capital of Japan, Nara.
Naoto Ueno
President of ISD