Researchers from around the world gathered in Roanoke this week for a conference on the science of exercise.
The International Biochemistry of Exercise Conference first gathered in 1968 in Belgium. Since then, it’s convened 20 times, including three times in the United States: Boston in 1982, Little Rock, Arkansas, in 2000. And this week... in Roanoke.
"It's a tough time to be a scientist in the U.S. right now," said Thomas Rando, director of the Broad Stem Cell Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, and one of the conference's keynote speakers. "There's a lot of reduction in funding, a lot of threats to the future. But this always gives everybody optimism that it's still worth doing, and you meet with people who are enthusiastic about the work; it keeps us all going."
Landing the conference at the Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center was a coup for the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute. And it pays off the institute's successful 2022 effort to lure internationally renowned researcher Zhen Yan away from the University of Virginia to launch its Center for Exercise Medicine Research.
"It's very important to put us on the map competing with many institutions and the research entities," Yan said.
Yan says the conference shows the progression of exercise medicine, which long focused on macro-physiology, and in particular, muscles and the cardiovascular system. Over the last 20 years, researchers have drilled down to the molecular level.
"We started to integrate all these things we find at the molecular level, to integrate that into the molecular level to understand why exercise is so good at promoting health and resisting disease," Yan said.
That means researchers are looking at how exercise affects everything from stem cells — Tom Rando's specialty — to mitochondria.
Christina Hugenschmidt, associate professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, spoke on how the brains of aging adults are affected by dance.
"I've been kind of blown away by the level of science that's happening in all the discussions about different biomarkers and how exercise changes every tissue in your body," Hugenschmidt said.
That's part of what drew Eddie Rygalski, a PHD student in translational biology medicine and health in Yan's lab.
"I guess I just want to comment on the exercise field really shifting from mostly focused on the heart and muscle to now really opening up to every organ system," Rygalski said. "Especially with my interest in the brain, it really offers me an opportunity to have a foot in both worlds."
Broad Center Director Tom Rando says those conversations are the real draw of this conference.
"That's a reason that we go to conferences — not just to hear the talks, it's to meet the other investigators," Rando said. "It's to have talks offline — 'What are you working on, we should collaborate, here's your expertise, here's my expertise, can we put this together?' In many ways, that offline conversation is more important than the formal presentations and the posters."
The researchers weren't just discussing exercise, but participating in it, too. It turns out Roanoke's a pretty great place for that.
"This afternoon we allocated a whole afternoon for activities," Yan said. "People are going to go hiking and go cycling. I'm gonna play pickleball."
Hugenschmidt — who was headed out to go rock climbing later — says researchers at the International Biochemistry of Exercise Conference are digging far beyond the idea that exercise is good for you.
"The kind of questions people have — like, 'How much should I exercise? When should I exercise? How does exercise affect my muscles and my blood sugar and my longevity?' — all of those kind of questions are what the scientists here are asking," Hugenschmidt said. "And to have that right here in Roanoke, Virginia is pretty exceptional."
The conference concluded Wednesday, but many participants are sticking around the rest of the week for a post-conference course at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute.
