GPCR Retreat 2012: timing is everything

In London, Ontario, the 13th Annual Joint meeting of the Great Lakes GPCR Retreat and the Club des Récepteurs à Sept Domaines Transmembranaires (known simply as the GPCR Retreat) was held on 17-19 October 2012, organized by Steve Ferguson and Peter Chidiac. This meeting gathered together a core group of investigators from Michigan, Ontario and Québec and has steadily increased its attendance in both the eastern (Europe) and western (USA, Canada) directions. This year's buzz naturally centered around the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was won the week before by Brian Kobilka and Robert Lefkowitz for their work on receptor structure and function. Michel Bouvier provided a heartfelt tribute to one of the attendees, Marc Caron, a pioneer in the GPCR field, has made many contributions to the work that led to this year's Nobel Prize. The meeting featured interesting sessions on the physiological roles of GPCRs in the nervous system, circadian biology and cancer, dealing at the cellular and molecular level with GPCR, G protein and effector structure and function, regulation and trafficking--with an overall focus on how to move molecular pharmacology in vivo.