Confirmed Speakers

Weill Cornell Medicine

Dr Artis completed his doctoral research training at the University of Manchester, UK focusing on regulation of immunity and inflammation in the intestine. Following receipt of a Wellcome Trust Prize Traveling Fellowship, he undertook his post-doctoral fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania where he continued his research training in examining the regulation of immune responses at barrier surfaces. Dr Artis joined the faculty at Penn in 2005 and became a Professor of Microbiology in 2014. Dr. Artis then moved to Cornell University and became the Michael Kors Professor of Immunology, Director of the Jill Roberts Institute for IBD Research at Weill Cornell Medicine, and Director of the Friedman Center for Nutrition and Inflammation at Cornell University in New York City. Dr Artis has developed a research program focused on dissecting the pathways that regulate innate and adaptive immune cell function at barrier surfaces in the context of health and disease. His research program also encompasses a significant effort to translate research findings in pre-clinical models into patient-based studies of immune-mediated diseases. Dr Artis is funded by NIH, CCFA and BWF and has been the recipient of Young Investigator Awards from AAI, CCFA and ICIS, the Colyton Prize, the Stanley Cohen Prize and the AAI-BD Biosciences Investigator Award.

Elasmogen Ltd

Caroline is CEO and founder of Elasmogen, a company that discovers and develops soloMER biologics for the treatment of inflammatory diseases and cancer. Before establishing Elasmogen, she successfully led teams at Wyeth and subsequently Pfizer in Global Bio-therapeutic Technologies progressing early platform technologies to late stage clinical development. Prior to this she was Alliance and Programs Manager at Haptogen Ltd and a key part of the acquisition team that successfully exited the business to Wyeth Inc. She has been awarded a prestigious Royal Society of Edinburgh Enterprise Fellowship, is a doctoral graduate from the University of Aberdeen in Biochemistry and an MBA (distinction) from Robert Gordon’s University, Business School. Caroline is a member of the Enterprise Skills and Strategy Board, is a Senior Associate for the Entrepreneurial Business School, Edinburgh and Entrepreneur in Residence for Queen’s University Belfast.

University of Birmingham

University of Glasgow

Dr Neil Basu is a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, an Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist, NHS Glasgow, and is currently the elected co-chair of the UK and Ireland Vasculitis Society. Clinically, he has developed and now leads an almost unique multi-disciplinary vasculitis service, one of the largest in Europe and one of only two healthcare providers in the UK affiliated with the recently formed European Union Reference Network in vasculitis. He previously worked in the world-renowned Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Centre at the University of Michigan, and was also a Fellow for the EULAR taskforce, examining classification and diagnostic criteria in systemic vasculitis.

University of Pittsburgh

I am a cellular immunologist with a research focus on dissecting the role of cytokine signaling in the immunity against renal infections and pathogenesis of autoinflammatory kidney diseases. Building upon my prior work in kidney inflammatory conditions, my research program at University of Pittsburgh addresses a major problem in the field of cytokine Interleukin-17 (IL-17) in renal damage during infection and autoimmunity. The kidney is an organ particularly susceptible to damage caused by infections and autoinflammatory conditions. Even so, renal immunology remains remarkably understudied by immunologists. I have positioned myself to take advantage of this important knowledge gap. Using mouse models and human bio-specimens, we are deeply involved in understanding the mechanisms of kidney tissue damage in infections and autoimmune conditions. Recently, we also showed the mechanisms of immune dysfunction in patients with kidney disease, which leads to increased susceptibility of infection in these patients. Thus, my research embodies the features of a basic scientist with scientific contributions spanning from very basic work in cell/animal models to more clinical work in humans.

Trinity College Dublin

Andrew Bowie is Professor of Innate Immunology at Trinity College Dublin (TCD). He obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from Trinity College Dublin in 1997. After postdoctoral training with Prof Luke O’Neill, he was appointed as a lecturer UCD, before returning to TCD in 2001 to establish the first Immunology undergraduate degree in Ireland. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of TCD, and in 2014 a member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 2017 he was awarded the Irish Society for Immunology Public Lecture Medal for his outstanding contribution to Irish Immunology. His research focuses on innate immune sensing and signalling mechanisms of pathogens, especially viruses.

Nature Reviews Immunology

Yvonne Bordon is a Senior Editor for Nature Reviews Immunology and has been part of the journal’s team for over a decade. She embarked on a career in scientific publishing after completing a PhD and post-doc in immunology at the University of Glasgow in the laboratories of Prof. Allan Mowat and Prof. Rob Nibbs.

The University of Cambridge

Clare Bryant is Professor of Innate Immunity at the Departments of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine in the University of Cambridge. She studies innate immune cell signalling in response to Pathogen Associated Molecular Pattern Receptor (PRR) activation during bacterial infection using cutting edge multi-disciplinary approaches (collaborating with mathematicians, physicists, physical chemists and structural biologists) to answer fundamental questions about host-pathogen interactions and how to modify them therapeutically. She also applies these innovative approaches to study PRR-induced inflammatory signalling in chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. In particularly her work super resolution and single molecule fluorescent imaging approaches to study Toll-like receptor and NOD-like receptor signalling within cells have revealed novel mechanisms in how these receptors signal.

University of Oxford

Chris obtained a degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford (1985) with subsequent undergraduate training in Medicine (MBBS) at the Royal Free Hospital, London (1990). His postgraduate medical training was in General Medicine and Rheumatology at the Hammersmith Hospital, London and John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. He obtained a DPhil arising from a Wellcome Trust Clinical Training Fellowship at the Institute Molecular Medicine, Oxford in 1996.
Funded by a Wellcome Trust Clinician Scientist Fellowship, he joined the Department of Rheumatology in Birmingham later that year. In 2001 he was awarded an MRC Senior Clinical Fellowship and in 2002 became Arthritis Research UK Professor of Rheumatology
In May 2017 he took up a new joint academic post between the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford as Director of Clinical Research at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Oxford and Director of NIHR Infrastructure in Birmingham for Birmingham Health Partners to Direct the Arthritis Therapy Acceleration Programme (A-TAP)

Weill Cornell Medicine

Dr. Cesarman was born in Mexico City, where she obtained her MD degree, followed by a PhD from New York University and Anatomic Pathology Residency training at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Dr. Cesarman was part of the team that discovered the Kaposi’s sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV/HHV-8) and found that this virus is consistently present in a subset of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, designated primary effusion lymphomas (PEL), which led to the recognition of these lymphomas as a distinct disease entity. Current research efforts in the Cesarman lab are aimed at better understanding mechanisms of herpesviral pathogenesis, including the role of herpesviruses in the tumor microenvironment, with the goal of directly therapeutically targeting viral oncogenic signals, or indirectly through immunotherapeutic approaches. Dr. Cesarman has also conducted cancer genomic studies to gain a deeper understanding of the viral and cellular contribution to the tumor genetic and epigenetic landscape, focusing on lymphoma and other AIDS-related malignancies.

https://pathology.weill.cornell.edu/research/research-laboratories/viral-oncogenesis

Hanyang University

Dr. Je-Min Choi who is a tenured professor at Hanyang University in Korea was graduated at Department of Biotechnology, Yonsei University in Korea and completed graduate school at Yonsei for both Master and Ph.D. During his PhD, he studied CTLA-4 signaling in T cells to modulate inflammation in asthma or arthritis by utilizing cell-penetrating peptide. When he started post-doctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine, he continued immune regulation study with Foxp3 to induce Treg cells in colitis as well as investigated role of PPARs in T cells regarding Tfh/germinal center reaction and autoimmunity. His current major interests are pathogenic T cell functions in autoimmune diseases as well as development of immune modulatory molecules by targeting T cell functions.; 1) Antigen-independent bystander T cell functions in autoimmune pathogenesis, 2) Gender differences of autoimmunity and T cell functions, 3) Immune modulatory drug development by cell-penetrating peptide or proteins. 4) Autoimmune disease like multiple sclerosis, IBD, psoriasis, etc.

University of Cambridge

Menna Clatworthy read Medicine at Cardiff, completed her professional training in nephrology at Cambridge, and undertook a PhD at the University of Cambridge investigating IgG effector function in autoimmunity and infection. She was awarded the British Renal Association Raine Award and the Academy of Medical Sciences/Medical Research Society Young Investigator Award for this work. She subsequently completed a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellowship at Cambridge and the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA.
She is currently the Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Cambridge Department of Medicine. She also works clinically as an Honorary Consultant Nephrologist and holds an Associate Faculty position in Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. Her research interests include tissue immunity, particularly in the urinary tract, utilizing single cell technologies to better understand the cellular landscape of human organs. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science and the Learned Society of Wales.

University of Michigan

Professor Daniel Clauw is a Professor of Anaesthesiology, Medicine (Rheumatology) and Psychiatry at the University of Michigan and the current Chief of Rheumatology and Vice Chair of Medicine. He became the first Assistant and then Associate Dean for Clinical Research (through 2009) and is now the Senior Associate Director and co-directs the Research Development Core and Pre-Doctoral Programs. He is currently Chair of the large NI MAPP network, which consists of eight academic centre discovery sites (including the University of Michigan site), as well as a data and tissue coordinating centre.

La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology

Dr. Crotty’s lab studies the fundamental immunology underlying vaccine functions. Initially trained in molecular virology and then viral immunology, Crotty’s laboratory focuses on both the basic immunology of T follicular helper (Tfh) CD4 T cells (Science 2009, Immunity 2019), viral immunology including SARS-CoV-2 (Cell 2020), B cell immunodominance (Science 2016, Immunity 2018, Science 2019,), and the central roles of germinal centers and memory in vaccine immunology (Cell 2019, Nature Medicine 2020). Dr. Crotty was a Pew Scholar and a 2016-2019 Highly Cited Researcher. His recent COVID-19 immunology work has become the highest attention getting Cell paper ever (Cell 2020; Nature Reviews Immunology 2020). His newest study on COVID-19 immune memory (Science 2021) is the largest every study of adaptive immunity (CD4 T cells, CD8 T cells, antibodies, and memory B cells) for any viral infection, and was covered by the New York Times and other major media outlets.

University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK & Institute Imagine, Paris, France

 2021 Philip Markus Memorial Lecture Speaker “Human type I interferonopathies”

Yanick Crow is a clinical scientist (MD-PhD) and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, working at the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, Edinburgh, UK and the Institut Imagine, Paris, France. He has an interest in monogenic disorders associated with an up-regulation of type I interferons – a set of inborn errors of immunity resulting from abnormal sensing, inappropriate stimulation, or defective negative regulation of the type I interferon system. Understanding these so-called type I interferonopathies has the potential to provide insights into immunological homeostasis, mechanisms of self / non-self discrimination and viral immunity.

King’s College London

Franziska Denk is a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London, where she works on neuroimmune interactions and epigenetic mechanisms in the context of chronic pain. Her lab uses transgenic models and high-throughput molecular analyses, such as RNA-seq, on sorted cell populations (https://www.franziskadenk.com/, @denk_lab).
Franziska studied Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and completed her DPhil there in 2009. She started her own research group in 2017 with the help of an MRC New Investigator Research Grant. Since then, she has also received funding from the European Union (IMI2), industry and several charities.
Franziska is passionate about data sharing (Denk, Nature, 2017) and interdisciplinary research in an open, positive research culture. She is co-Director of the Wellcome Trust funded PhD Training Scheme in Neuro-Immune Interactions in Health and Disease (https://www.wellcomeneuroimmunephd.co.uk/).

Trinity College Dublin

Padraic Fallon is Professor of Translational Immunology, School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Research involves the use of animal models, including mutant and transgenic strains, advances fundamental understanding of infection immunobiology and inflammatory disease processes. Translational mechanistic studies address innate and adaptive cellular responses in patient cohorts with inflammatory or infectious diseases.

Columbia University

Dr. Farber is the George H Humphreys, II Professor of Surgical Sciences (in Surgery) and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University. The focus of her research is on anti-viral immunity and human immunology. Dr. Farber’s laboratory identified tissue-resident memory T cells in the lung that mediate protective immunity to respiratory virus infection. These findings led her to establish a major initiative to study human tissue immunity and its development from infancy through adulthood in multiple mucosal and lymphoid tissues from organ donors of all ages. Dr. Farber’s research is supported by the NIH, Helmsley Charitable trust and Chan Zuckerberg initiative.

Monash University

Professor Mark Febbraio is a Senior Principal Research Fellow of the NHMRC, and the Head of the Cellular and Molecular Metabolism Laboratory within the Drug Discovery Program at Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University Australia. His research is focussed on understanding mechanisms associated with exercise, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cancer and his aim is to develop novel drugs to treat lifestyle related diseases. He has authored over 270 papers and has over 40000 career citations. He has won several scientific prizes including the A K McIntyre Prize for significant contributions to Australian Physiological Science (1999), the Kellion Award for the Australian Diabetes Society (2017), The Eureka Scientific Prize (2020), The GSK Award for Research Excellence (2020) and The Endocrinology Society UK International Medallist (2021).

Umass Medical School

Dr. Fitzgerald is Professor and Vice Chair in the department of Medicine and the Director of the Program in Innate Immunity at Umass Medical School. She directs an internationally recognized laboratory focused on understanding the activation and resolution of the inflammatory response in both health and disease. The long-term goal of her work is to determine how inappropriate activation of innate immunity underlies the pathogenesis of infectious, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases in humans.

Dr. Fitzgerald is an elected member of the American Academy of Microbiology and the Royal Irish Academy. She has also received several awards including a MERIT award from the NIH, the Saint Patrick’s Day Medal, from the Irish Government and Science Foundation Ireland, the Milstein Award for Excellence in Interferon and Cytokine research (from the International Cytokine and Interferon Society), the Eli Lilly and Company Elanco Research Award (from the American Society of Microbiology) and the BD-Biosciences Investigator Award (from the American Association of Immunologists). She is ranked amongst the top 1% most Cited researchers for Immunology consistently since 2014 (Thompson Reuters, every year since 2014) and is currently President of the International Cytokine and Interferon Society.

University of Washington

Michael Gale, Jr. is Director of the University of Washington Center for Innate Immunity and Immune Disease. His research is focused on understanding the molecular basis of nonself recognition and regulation of innate immunity and inflammation in RNA virus infection.

Laurie H. Glimcher, MD is the President and CEO of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and the Richard and Susan Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

She is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the former President of the American Association of Immunologists. She served on the Vice President’s Blue Ribbon panel. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceutical Corporation and Analog Devices, Inc.

Dr. Glimcher’s research identified key transcriptional regulators of protective immunity and the origin of pathophysiologic immune responses underlying autoimmune, infectious and malignant diseases.

Aside from her research efforts, Dr. Glimcher has been a staunch proponent of improved access to care, health policy, and medical education, while simultaneously serving as a pioneering mentor and role model for cancer research trainees and for all women in science.

NIAID/NIH

Dr. Raphaela Goldbach-Mansky is the Chief of the Translational Autoinflammatory Diseases Section (TADS) in the Laboratory of Clinical Immunology and Microbiology (LCIM) at NIAID at the NIH. Dr. Goldbach-Mansky’s translational research program focuses on clinical and translational studies in children with early-onset autoinflammatory diseases. Her research applies an integrative approach to characterize the genetic and molecular causes of autoinflammatory diseases and to design targeted treatment studies to investigate the role of specific inflammatory pathways in the pathogenesis of autoinflammatory diseases with the ultimate goal to improve disease outcomes. Her studies in patients with NOMID and DIRA established targeted treatments with IL-1 inhibitors as standard of care and led to FDA approval of anakinra for NOMID in 2012 and anakinra and rilonacept in DIRA in 2020. Her recent translational and interventional studies in patients with CANDLE, SAVI and other autoinflammatory diseases with chronic IFN signatures focus on understanding the pathogenic role for Type I Interferons in the disease pathogenesis and on the role of IL-18 in predisposing to the development of macrophage activation syndrome. Dr. Goldbach-Mansky established the Translational autoinflammatory research network (TARN) to promote translational research in patients with rare autoinflammatory diseases.

University of Glasgow

Professor Gerry Graham BSc, PhD, FRSE, FMedSci
Gerry Graham is Gardiner Chair of Immunology and Head of the Chemokine Research Group (www.chemokineresearchgroup.org) at the University of Glasgow and is also interim Director of the Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation. He has worked in the field of chemokine biology for over 30 years and has been responsible for many of the seminal discoveries in this area. He has two major interests in terms of chemokine research: firstly, his group are amongst the world leaders in the study of atypical chemokine receptors and their role in the regulation of chemokine function; secondly, he is using complex genomic approaches to try to understand, in more detail, the orchestration of the chemokine-driven inflammatory response. Work in Gerry’s lab is supported by a Medical Research Council Programme Grant and by a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award. He is a recipient of a Wolfson Royal Society Merit Award and has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has served on a number of grants panels, including the Leukaemia Research Fund Medical and Scientific Advisory Panel. He also spent over four years as a member of the Medical Research Council Infections and Immunity Board and is currently the Chair of the Wellcome Trust Expert Review Group in the Immune System in Health and Disease. He publishes regularly in prominent international journals and is frequently invited to major international scientific meetings.

University of Melbourne

John Hamilton has made significant molecular and translational contributions to the field of inflammation. He has shown how colony-stimulating factors (CSFs) control macrophage lineage numbers and function in inflammation, mainly in the contexts of arthritic disease and inflammation-associated pain. He discovered the role of CSFs in inflammation, pioneered cell signalling studies for the CSFs, and progressed the biology of the CSFs to encourage and facilitate several successful international clinical trials with antagonists to the CSFs, for example, in arthritis and cancer.

University of Alabama at Birmingham

Imperial College London

James is a senior lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. His team have a long standing interest in cytokine mediated regulation of CD4 T cell responses, and how there are altered in early life compared to adulthood. Recently this work has focused on using both mouse models and human samples to explore the balance between STAT3 and STAT5 signalling cytokines and how this determines differences in antibody production.

Withers & Rogers LLP

“Helen is a UK and European Patent Attorney and has a first class BSc and a PhD in Neuroendocrinology from the University of Bristol.

Helen has worked extensively on patent applications relating to molecular biology and cell culture, including regenerative medicine and specific techniques related to culturing organoids. Helen also handles applications relating to antibodies, gene therapies, cancer immunology, generation and use of recombinant proteins, and genome engineering, including novel CRISPR techniques. As well as working with biotech companies of all sizes, Helen handles a significant amount of work for UK and US Higher Education institutions, and manages an extensive ophthalmology portfolio for a high profile UK University.”

Eligo Bioscience

Edith Hessel is a mucosal immunologist with over 20 years’ experience in drug development, who has successfully pioneered the development of novel target discovery platforms and has advanced multiple therapeutics from inception to clinical proof-of-concept in both Biotech and Pharma.

Since Feb 2021, Dr Hessel is Chief Scientific Officer at Eligo Bioscience, a company that is developing first-in-class microbiome gene therapies that can change both microbiome function and composition with unprecedented precision.

Prior to joining Eligo Bioscience, Dr Hessel co-founded Mestag Therapeutics, a company backed by SV Health Investors, where as CSO she built the research team and oversaw the creation of Mestag’s lead program and target discovery platform.

Prior to Mestag Therapeutics, Dr Hessel conceived and built the Refractory Respiratory Inflammation Discovery Performance Unit as VP at GlaxoSmithKline, and with her team developed innovative approaches to target discovery, adding multiple therapeutic target programs to GSK’s pipeline. Additionally, during her tenure at GSK, Dr Hessel oversaw the clinical development of nemiralisib, an inhaled PI3Kdelta inhibitor, from its early molecule stages through a Phase 2b dose ranging study in patients and led the formation of multiple strategic commercial and academic partnerships.

Dr Hessel currently serves on the board of the Fraunhofer ITEM Institute and as Trustee for the British Society for Immunology. She received her PhD from Utrecht University, trained as a PostDoc at DNAX Research Institute, and has in 2017 been awarded an Honorary Professorship at the University of Manchester in recognition of her scientific achievements.

Cardiff University

Ian Humphreys is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow, Professor of Viral Pathogenesis and Director of the Systems Immunity University Research Institute at Cardiff University, UK. The laboratory studies mechanisms that regulate antiviral immune responses and seeks to understand how these processes can restrict viral pathogenesis but also, in certain contexts, facilitate virus persistence and dissemination.

University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Hunter’s laboratory focuses on the events that lead to the development of protective immunity as well as to limit T cell mediated pathology during parasitic infections and the role of cytokines in these processes. We are able to utilize different combinations of transgenic parasites to study how cytokines such as IFN-gamma, IL-2, IL-10, IL-12, IL-18 and IL-27 affect resistance to infection. Dr. Hunter obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow and is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and is the President elect of the ICIS.

Lancaster University

Dr Lucy Jackson-Jones is a Lecturer in Biomedicine at Lancaster University. The Jackson-Jones laboratory investigates local immune responses that occur within the body cavities. We use mouse models and patient samples to reveal the interactions that occur between immune cells, stromal cells and their secreted products within serous fluid and fat associated lymphoid clusters in the context of inflammation.

Hudson Institute of Medical Research

Professor Brendan Jenkins is Deputy Director of the Centre for Innate Immunity and Infectious Diseases at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, Australia. His research interest is to define the roles that innate immune regulators, namely pattern recognition receptors and IL-6 family cytokines, play in the pathogenesis of inflammation-associated cancers, including those of the stomach, pancreas and lung. His research programs incorporate long standing collaborations with basic scientific researchers and clinicians both nationwide and overseas, with a view to translate his preclinical findings into the clinic.

University of Cardiff

I am the Dean of Research for The School of Medicine, and the Research Theme Lead for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation for the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences. As Professor of Inflammation Biology I have an international reputation in the field of cytokine biology. My research considers the mode-of-action of anti-cytokine therapies, the identification of cytokine signatures that reflect patient outcome, and the development of novel cytokine-directed therapies. With a focus on cytokines that signal through the Jak-STAT pathway my research examines how cytokine networks deliver protective immunity and the transition to pathology and chronic disease progression. I am particularly recognised for studies of IL-6, and sit on various pharmaceutical company advisory boards relating to the clinical development of IL-6 targeted therapies.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti is a Member and Vice Chair of the Immunology Department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and she is the Rose Marie Thomas Endowed Chair. She is a founding member of the inflammasome field, and her lab continues to make critical contributions to this research discipline. She also identified master regulators of inflammasome activation and the cell death pathways pyroptosis, apoptosis, and necroptosis, leading her to pioneer the concept of PANoptosis and describe its implications in health and disease.

NIAMS/NIH

Dr. Yuka Kanno was born in Japan and attended Tohoku University School of Medicine, received MD and PhD in medical science. After completing her residency in internal medicine, she moved to the US and trained in molecular biology at National Institutes of Health. She has been working at National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases since 2003 as Staff Scientist, engaging in basic and translational research to study immune cells. She aims to understand cell-type specific genome organization and gene transcription, and how extracellular signals influence epigenetic information built in chromatin of various immune cells.

University of Bristol

Golam Khandaker is Professor of Psychiatry and Head of the Immunopsychiatry and Experimental Medicine Programme at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, University of Bristol. His research focuses on identifying and validating novel immunological mechanisms and potential treatment targets for depression and psychosis using population-based data, genetic analysis, and proof-of-concept experimental medicine trials of novel immunotherapies in patients with depression and psychosis. Using prospective cohort and Mendelian randomization designs, Golam has reported evidence for potential causal role for IL-6 in depression and psychosis. This work has led to two proof-of-concept RCTs of the anti-IL-6R monoclonal antibody tocilizumab for depression (Insight study) and psychosis (PIMS trial) funded by the Wellcome Trust and MRC respectively.

UK Medical Research Council

Anna is Head of Epidemic Preparedness at the UK Medical Research Council (MRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Recent activities include running the UKRI-NIHR Covid-19 rapid response calls. Prior to joining MRC she was Programme Manager for Career Development at the Academy of Medical Sciences, and Engagement Manager for the open access resource Europe PMC based at the British Library. She was formerly a biomedical scientist with experience of basic and translational projects, both in industry and academia.

Medical University Innsbruck, Institute of Physiology

Michaela Kress is a physician scientist and full professor at the Department of Physiology and Biomedical Physics Medical University of Innsbruck in Austria. She served as President of the Austrian Neuroscience Association, member of the Scientific Program Committee of several congresses of the international (IASP) and European (EFIC) pain societies. She coordinated the ncRNAPain research consortium funded by the European Commission. She teaches medical students and supervises PhD students in MSCA- and FWF funded programs. Her research focus is on neuroimmune interactions in the nervous system and their hub regulators in the pain pathway. These are explored by integrating multiple methodological approaches ranging from behavior phenotyping to expression analysis and electrophysiological recordings from peripheral nerve and from neuronal networks in the brain. In particular, non-coding RNAs, the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 and its signal transducer Il-6/gp130 are explored and novel models for pain disorders developed with a recent focus on human model systems.

University of Erlangen

After graduating from the Medical University of Vienna in 2002, Gerhard Krönke worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Medical University of Vienna (2002-2004) and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (2004-2006). From 2006-2015 he conducted his clinical training in Internal Medicine and subsequently in Rheumatology at the University Hospital Erlangen, where he is currently working as Senior Physician at the Department of Internal Medicine 3 since 2012. In 2016, he was appointed Professor of Translational Immunology at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research focuses on cellular, molecular and metabolic pathways involved in the maintenance and break of immunological self-tolerance as well as the onset and resolution of inflammation. In particular, he is trying to understand the mechanisms and events leading to the development of inflammatory autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematodes and to develop novel strategies for their diagnosis and treatment. In 2014 he received an ERC Starting grant and is currently acting as the spokesperson of the DFG research unit FOR2886 “PANDORA” (Pathways triggering AutoimmuNity and Defining Onset of early Rheumatoid Arthritis).

Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School

Dr. Vijay Kuchroo is the Samuel L. Wasserstrom Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, Senior Scientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Co-Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, Brigham Research Institutes, an Institute Member of the Broad Institute, a collaborator in the Klarman Cell Observatory project that focuses on T cell differentiation, and Director of the Evergrande Center for Immunologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

His major research interests include autoimmune diseases, particularly the role of co-stimulation, the genetic basis of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis and multiple sclerosis, and cell surface molecules and regulatory factors that regulate induction of T cell tolerance and dysfunction.

University College London

Helen Lachmann is a Professor of Medicine at University College London & Clinical Service Lead for Immunity & Rare Diseases Division, Royal Free Hospital London

Having trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge & at University College London, she started her research at the UK National Amyloidosis Centre in 1999. She has published widely & her main scientific interests are focused on the genetics & management of the systemic autoinflammatory diseases & characterization & treatment of acquired & hereditary systemic amyloidosis.

Imperial College

Clare Lloyd is Professor of Respiratory Immunology, Head of the Division of Respiratory Sciences at the National Heart and Lung Institute, and Vice Dean for Institutional Affairs in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College, London. The Lloyd lab explores the interactions between resident lung cells and immune cells during development and resolution of pulmonary inflammation. The lab uses a mixture of in vivo mouse models and in vitro culture systems using cells from patients to investigate the mechanisms underlying the pulmonary immune response to inhaled allergens and pathogens. The current focus is predominantly how the genetic background of an individual and the external environment influences epithelial-immune interactions, particularly with respect to infection history and development of allergic immune responses in early life.

University of  Manchester

Andrew MacDonald completed his PhD studying immunity to parasitic worms (helminths) at the University of Edinburgh in 1998. After several years in the U.S., first at Cornell University and then at the University of Pennsylvania, he returned to the UK in 2002 to the University of Edinburgh where he established his lab through successive MRC Career Development and Senior Fellowships at the Institute of Immunology and Infection Research. In January 2013 he took up the position of Professor of Immunology at the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research, within the Lydia Becker Institute of Immunology and Inflammation at the University of Manchester.

Research in his lab addresses some outstanding fundamental questions about activation and modulation of cellular immunity, with a particular focus on dendritic cells and macrophages, and T cell activation by antigen presenting cells during inflammation caused by helminths or allergens. His research aims to better understand how immunity and inflammation is promoted or regulated during disease, with emphasis on murine mechanistic studies in vivo during helminth infection or in allergic airway inflammation, complemented by analysis of ex vivo patient samples. Current projects include determining the importance of different dendritic cell and macrophage subsets during pulmonary and intestinal type 2 inflammation, and the role of the tissue environment, metabolism and the host microbiota in these processes.

WEHI

A/Prof Seth Masters is head of the Inflammasomes and Autoinflammatory Disease laboratory at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (Australia). He holds a joint appointment at the Guangzhou Women’s and Children’s Hospital (China) and is appointed as a fellow of the Viertel Foundation, HHMI-Wellcome Trust and the NHMRC.

Newcastle University

Derek Mann is a molecular biologist who for the past 3 decades has focussed his work on the biology of liver disease and translation of fundamental discoveries to clinical investigations. He is best known for his discoveries on the epigenetic and transcriptional control of fibrosis, in particular the role of the NF-kB family of transcription factors. More recently he has developed projects that are illuminating the role of neutrophils in ageing and cancer. He is currently Professor of Hepatology at Newcastle University where he leads the Newcastle Fibrosis Research Group. In addition he is a founding scientist, director and CSO of the spinout company FibroFind which is a CRO working with many of the major pharmaceutical companies to develop anti-fibrotic molecules towards clinical use.

University of Glasgow

Professor Iain McInnes is Vice Principal and Head of the College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, Muirhead Chair of Medicine and Versus Arthritis Professor of Rheumatology at the University of Glasgow.

A global leader in the field of arthritis research, over two decades, Professor McInnes has led numerous clinical trials and pathogenesis investigation programmes in inflammatory arthritis at an international level. His work has focused on the biology of inflammatory cytokines in arthritis and extended to other inflammatory diseases. More recently, he has worked on the mechanisms of co-morbidities in chronic diseases. He has also pioneered the area of precision medicine in inflammatory arthritis.

For the last five years, Professor McInnes has served as Director of the Arthritis Research UK Centre of Excellence for Rheumatoid Arthritis, renewed as the UK Centre for Inflammatory Arthritis through to 2024. He is Chief Investigator of the IMID-Bio-UK meta-consortium leading the UK effort to discover precision medicine tractable biomarkers for application in immune diseases. He is immediate past chairman of the FOREUM (Foundation for European Rheumatology Research) Scientific Committee, leads the European Roadmap programme that is defining the research agenda for European rheumatology for the next decade, and is President of EULAR (European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology), the largest global transnational rheumatology organisation.

Professor McInnes is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is the recipient of several prestigious prizes in recognition of his work, including the Sir James Black Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017, the Heberden Medal of the British Society for Rheumatology in 2018, and the Carol-Nachman Prize for Rheumatology, Germany (the highest international award in rheumatology) in 2019. He was awarded a CBE for services to medicine by Her Majesty the Queen in 2019.

University of Dundee

Ignacio Moraga is a Principal Investigator in the Cell Signalling and Immunology Department at University of Dundee, UK. The Moraga lab studies how cytokines regulate immune cell fate decisions. The objective is to gain key insights into the molecular mechanisms that underlie cytokine functional diversity. Fundamental to the lab program is the use of protein engineering to manipulate cytokine immuno-modulatory activities with the ultimate goal to inform new therapies for immunomodulation.

McMaster University

Dr. Ishac Nazy is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University, and the Scientific Director of the McMaster Platelet Immunology Laboratory. Dr. Nazy’s research interests are in the specific interactions between antibodies and their target antigens in immune-mediated platelet disorders, leading to thrombocytopenia and/or thrombosis. Dr. Nazy is the lead investigator for research studies funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the National Institutes of Health, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, and the COVID-19 Rapid Research Fund. His work has been published in journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Nature Metabolism, Blood, Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, British Journal of Haematology, and the American Journal of Hematology, among others.

Philogen

Dario Neri was born in Rome on 1. May 1963 and grew up in Siena (Italy). He studied Chemistry at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and earned a PhD in Chemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich), under the supervision of Professor Kurt Wüthrich (Nobel Prize Chemistry 2002). After a post-​doctoral research internship (1992-​1996) at the Medical Research Council Centre in Cambridge (UK), under the supervision of Sir Gregory Winter (Nobel Prize Chemistry 2018), he became professor at ETH Zürich in 1996. Dario Neri has been Full Professor of Biomacromolecules at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich. In October 2020, he moved full-time to Philogen (www.philogen.com), a Swiss-Italian Biotech Company which he had co-founded in 1996 and in which he currently serves as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer, while retaining the ETH Professor title.

The research activities of the Neri group and of Philogen focus on the engineering of therapeutic antibodies for the therapy of cancer and other angiogenesis-​related disorders and on the development of DNA-​encoded chemical libraries. Two of the antibody products of Philogen are currently being investigated in Phase III clinical trials in Europe and in the United States.

Dario Neri has published more than 400 articles in peer-​reviewed scientific journals. He is the recipient of the ISOBM Abbott Prize 2000, of the Amgen-​Dompe’ Biotec Award 2000, of the Mangia d’Oro 2001, of the Prous Award 2006 of the European Federation of Medicinal Chemistry, of the Robert-​Wenner-Prize 2007 of the Swiss Cancer League, of the SWISS BRIDGE Award 2008, of the Prix Mentzer of the French Medicinal Chemistry Society in 2011, of the Phoenix Prize 2014, of an ERC Advanced Grant in 2015 and of the 6th World ADC Award in 2019.

Trinity College Dublin

Luke O’Neill is Professor of Biochemistry in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He is a world expert on innate immunity and inflammation. His main research interests include Toll-like receptors, Inflammasomes and Immunometabolism. Professor O’Neill is co-founder of Sitryx, which aims to develop new medicines that target immunometabolism for inflammatory diseases.

Imperial College London

Peter Openshaw is a respiratory physician and mucosal immunologist. He has worked on common cold viruses (RSV and influenza) since the mid-1980s and is/has been a government policy advisor (SAGE, NERVTAG, SPI etc.). He is the Director of HIC-Vac, an international consortium that promotes the use of human volunteer infection to accelerate vaccine development for pathogens of high global impact. He is a former President of the British Society for Immunology and a co-Lead on ISARIC4C study of COVID-19.

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals

Jamie Orengo, Ph.D., M.P.H., is the Vice President of Allergy and Immunity Research at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and leads a Research and Discovery group responsible for developing multiple groundbreaking approaches to treat allergic, respiratory and autoimmune disorders that span early to late stages of development. At Regeneron since 2008, Dr. Orengo has delivered preclinical packages for several INDs/BLAs: Dupixent (dupilumab), Itepekimab (anti-IL-33), anti-allergen (Fel d 1, Bet v 1), Kevzara (sarilumab), anti-IL-2rg (aplastic anemia), anti-BCMA x anti-CD3 (non-IO). Dr. Orengo has co-authored multiple key scientific journal and media articles featuring Regeneron research. Prior to joining Regeneron, Dr. Orengo completed her doctoral and postdoctoral studies at New York University School of Medicine examining the immune response to malaria parasites. She also received an M.P.H. from Yale School of Public Health studying the epidemiology of microbial diseases and a B.A. in biology from Columbia College, Columbia University.

NIAMS-NIH

John O’Shea, MD joined the NIH in 1981, and was appointed Scientific Director of NIAMS in 2005. His interest is cytokine signaling and the role of Jaks and Stats in immunoregulation, lymphocyte differentiation, transcriptional and epigenomic regulation. His lab cloned JAK3, demonstrated its role in immunodeficiency and collaborated with industry partners in the development of therapeutic JAK inhibitors. He has received many awards, including: the Howley Prize, the Ross Prize, the Milstein Award, and the AAI-Steinward Award. He was elected to the American Association of Physicians, National Academy of Medicine and is a Master in the American College of Rheumatology.

Queen Mary University of London

Professor Costantino Pitzalis MD, PhD, FRCP
Versus Arthritis Professor of Rheumatology

Deputy Director of the William Harvey Research Institute
Head of Centre for Experimental Medicine and Rheumatology
William Harvey Research Institute
Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Queen Mary University of London

Costantino Pitzalis is Versus Arthritis Professor of Rheumatology at the William Harvey Research Institute, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry Queen Mary University of London.

His research interests focus on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of inflammation and autoimmunity in chronic rheumatic conditions particularly rheumatoid arthritis (RA). He leads a Research Team of approximately 50 Researchers (Clinicians/Scientists) and has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers in the field of inflammation, immunity and arthritis.

He is the Chief Investigator of several biopsy-driven stratified-medicine randomised clinical trials (RCTs) funded by MRC/VA and NIHR with the ultimate goal of defining synovial specific signatures able to predict more accurately prognosis and treatment response. The aim is to integrate clinical and molecular pathology algorithms towards a new taxonomy of disease and precision medicine.

Kennedy Institute

Professor Fiona Powrie is Director of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Governor of the Wellcome Trust. She gained a PhD in immunology at the University of Oxford and then moved to the DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto, before returning to Oxford in 1996 as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Associate. Prior to her appointment to the Kennedy Institute, Fiona Powrie was the Sidney Truelove Professor of Gastroenterology and Head of the Translational Gastroenterology Unit, Oxford (2009- 2014). Her research examines the relationship between the intestinal microbiome and the host immune system and how this mutualistic relationship breaks down in inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and cancer. She has received numerous prestigious prizes and awards, including the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2012 and was elected an international member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center

The Prlic laboratory primarily studies T cell and innate-like T cell responses in mucosal tissues, with a particular interest in understanding how these cells function in different inflammatory environments, including infections and cancer. By defining the functional plasticity and functional potential of T cells in health and a range of different disease states, we aim to understand how we can manipulate these cells to our advantage. Our goal is to understand the molecular basis of cell activation and differentiation to learn how to manipulate the cells for therapeutic purposes and ultimately improve human health.

INSERM

Professor with tenure, laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases (HGID), INSERM1163, Imagine Institute, University of Paris, Paris, France and Adjunct Faculty Member, HGID Lab, The Rockefeller University, New York City, NY, USA. Group Leader: Human genetic determinism of fungal diseases

Yale University

Aaron Ring, M.D., Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine. His research focuses on using directed evolution to create new pharmacologic tools and therapeutics against immune receptors as well as to “tune” immune cytokines and growth factors for defined activities. His laboratory has also developed new technologies for identification of functional autoantibodies that target the exoproteome. Aaron is a recipient of the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, a Milstein Young Investigator Award from the International Cytokine and Interferon Society, and he was also named a Pew-Stewart Scholar and Robert T. McCluskey Yale Scholar.

University of Kiel

Stefan Rose-John is full Professor of Biochemistry and Director of the Institute for Biochemistry at the University of Kiel Medical School in Kiel, Germany. His research is focused on the molecular biology of cytokines. He has established the paradigm of Interleukin-6 trans-signaling via soluble Interleukin-6 receptor. He has found that Interleukin-6 trans-signaling is mainly pro-inflammatory whereas classic Interleukin-6 signaling via the membrane-bound Interleukin-6 receptor is rather protective. He has developed a specific inhibitor of Interleukin-6 trans-signaling, which does not interfere with classic Interleukin-6 signaling. This inhibitor, named Olamkicept has now finished phase II clinical trials for the treatment of autoimmune diseases and is on its way to phase III clinical trials.

Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology II

1999-2002 IPK Gatersleben, Germany
2002-2010 Biochemical Institute, University Kiel, Germany
since 2010 Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology II, University Düsseldorf, Germany

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Eui-Cheol Shin received his M.D. (1996) and Ph.D. (2001) from Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea, and his postdoctoral training from NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Then he joined Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea in 2007, where he is currently a professor. KAIST. His laboratory, the Laboratory of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, performs researches on T cell responses in human viral disease and cancer. In particular, they currently focuses on ‘T cell-mediated immunopathogenesis’, ‘senescence of T cells’, ‘reinvigoration of exhausted T cells’, ‘human immune monitoring’ and ‘immune responses in SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19’.

Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Jamie Spangler earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Biological Engineering at MIT. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine, Dr. Spangler launched her independent research group at Johns Hopkins University in July 2017, jointly between the departments of Biomedical Engineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. Her lab, located in the Translational Tissue Engineering Center at the School of Medicine, applies structural and mechanistic insights to re-engineer existing proteins and design new proteins that therapeutically modulate the immune response. In particular, her group is interested in engineering immune molecules such as cytokines, growth factors, and antibodies for targeted treatment of diseases such as cancer and autoimmune disorders.

University of Central Florida

Tara Strutt is an Assistant Professor within the Immunity and Pathogenesis Division of the College of Medicine Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL USA and is an affiliate faculty member of the UCF NanoScience Technology Center. She earned her Ph.D. in Immunology from the University of Saskatchewan in Canada and did her postdoctoral studies at the Trudeau Institute in NY prior to joining the Faculty at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in MA. Her studies have uncovered novel protective functions mediated by memory CD4 T cells during respiratory virus infection. Her research is centered on understanding how the how the adaptive immune system regulates innate inflammatory responses in the respiratory tract.

Dr Sutter completed her doctoral thesis in 2010 as a scholar of the Research Training Group GRK 1045 at the Institute of Virology in Essen, Germany, on Interferon-α mediated immunotherapy during Friend retroviral infection.

She is now group leader and Scientific Secretary of the Sino-German Virtual Institute of Viral Immunology at the Institute for Virology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

Her current research focuses on the impact of type I IFNs in chronic viral infections.

Karolinska Institutet

Professor Svensson studied Pharmacology at the Uppsala University, Sweden, graduating in 1999. She received her PhD in Molecular Pathology in 2005 from UCSD, on work focused on spinal mechanisms of pain transmission. She then undertook post-doctoral work centred on inhibitory regulation of intracellular signalling in rheumatoid arthritis at the Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology at UCSD.

Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine

Tomohiko Tamura is currently Professor (2009-) and Dean (2018-) of Yokohama City University Graduate School of Medicine. He obtained MD (1990) and PhD (1995) from Yokohama City University. As a clinician, he specialized hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (-1998). As a basic scientist, he has been studying the role of transcription factors such as IRFs in the development and function of immune cells at NIH (Post-doc and Staff Scientist, 1998-2006), University of Tokyo (Associate Professor, 2007-2009), and Yokohama City University (2009-present). He has received Milstein Young Investigator Award (ISICR, 2004).

University of Oxford

Professor Peter Taylor was appointed to the Norman-Collison Chair of Musculoskeletal Sciences at the University of Oxford in October 2011, and is a Fellow of St Peter’s College, also in Oxford. He is the Head of Clinical Sciences at the Botnar Research Centre, where he directs the Biomedical Research Unit Inflammation theme, and leads the rheumatology clinical trials group and related translational research program at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology within the Nuffield Health Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences. He was formerly Professor of Experimental Rheumatology at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Division, Imperial College, London, and honorary consultant rheumatologist in Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust.

Wellcome Sanger Institute

Sarah Teichmann is interested in global principles of regulation of gene expression and protein complexes, with a focus on immunity. Sarah did her PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK and was a Beit Memorial Fellow at University College London. She started her group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 2001, discovering stereotypical pathways of assembly and evolution of protein complexes during this time. In 2013, she moved to the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton/Cambridge, jointly with the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI). In February 2016 she became Head of the Cellular Genetics Programme at the WSI and co-founded the Human Cell Atlas international initiative which she continues to lead. Sarah was elected a member of EMBO in 2012, a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015 and a fellow of the Royal Society in 2020.

Monash University

Professor Tony Tiganis currently heads the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s Metabolism, Diabetes and Obesity Program. His general research interest is in understanding cellular signalling networks and tissue crosstalk in human disease. He was educated at The University of Melbourne and completed his PhD with Prof. Bruce E. Kemp, St Vincent’s Institute, Melbourne, before pursuing post-doctoral training with Prof. Nicholas K. Tonks, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY. He then established an independent laboratory at Monash University in 2000 and in recent years held a joint appointment at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Professor Tiganis also holds an adjunct position with the Yale School of Medicine.

Professor Tiganis’ laboratories are focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms contributing to the development of obesity and diabetes and determining how obesity and metabolism affect tumour cells and the immune system to promote the development of cancer, taking an integrative encompassing the fields of metabolism, immunology and cancer to address fundamental questions in biology and disease.

University of North Carolina

Professor Ting has been chosen as the 2021 ICIS-Pfizer Award winner in recognition of her outstanding discoveries in the fields of immunology, molecular biology, genomics, and microbiology, and especially for her observations regarding the control of immunity which impact a wide variety of diseases. Dr. Ting, combining her knowledge of cytokine regulation and function with state-of-the-art approaches to unravel the immunologic basis for inflammation in infection,inflammatory diseases and cancer, has elevated world-wide research on interferons and cytokines, most notably through her seminal work in NLRs that in many ways started the field of NOD-like receptor proteins.

As an active member of the cytokine community working on various aspects of cytokine biology since 1984, Dr. Ting’s focus for the last 25 years has been on understanding how cytokines such as interleukin-1 and type I Interferons are regulated during immune activation and how these cytokines in turn regulate the immune response to a plethora of diseases including inflammatory diseases, autoimmunity, metabolic diseases, neuroinflammation, cancer and infection bybacterial and viral pathogens. Her work has focused on the events that lead to the development of protective immunity as well as to understanding how cytokine dysregulation leads to an array of chronic inflammatory diseases. While most of her early research focused on the regulation of cytokine-induced major histocompatibility complex class II and the function of immune genes in brain glial cells, her pioneering work on pattern recognition receptors, especially the role of the NOD like receptor superfamily as sensors of microbial infection and sterile inflammation is perhaps her most significant and impactful contributions to the field of immunology.

This body of work coupled with her curiosity, generosity, and mentoring skills, has led to other equally path-breaking observations relevant to cytokine biology and human diseases. Her lab was amongst the first to describe the NLR family of proteins. These studies have been extended in many different ways to define NLRs and other novel intracellular sensors that respond to viral and intracellular bacterial infections. Since her early work identifying the CATERPILLER family (NLR family), Dr. Ting has worked steadfastly to identify the molecular mechanisms regulating these proteins and their ability to induce inflammasome formation, regulate interferon and inflammatory cytokines, impact microbiota and alter immunometabolism. Her lab has also shown the relevance of some of the NLRs in adaptive immune cells to alter T effector cells. These efforts have led to a large body of literature from her lab linking NLRs to the regulation of both inflammasome NLRs and non-inflammasome NLRs in a wide range ofdisorders. This body of work has provided compelling data to suggest that therapeutic targeting of NLRP3 and related inflammasomes could be a viable therapeutic approach for the treatment of a wide range of inflammatory diseases. Indeed, several biotech companies are exploring this issue now.

Jenny Pan-Yun Ting received her B.S. in medical technology from Illinois State University, and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University, USA.  She did her postdoctoral training at the University of Southern California and Duke University. She joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a faculty in 1984, and is currently the William Rand Kenan Professor of Genetics, with a joint appointment in the Department of Microbiology-Immunology.  She is also the Immunology Program Leader at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC-CH.  She has over 300 publications, and is consistently one of the highly cited researchers recognized by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics.  She has served on several councils at the National Institutes of Health, and is currently a member of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Board of Directors.  She has taken on numerous leadership roles including serving as the President of the American Association of Immunologists from 2020-2021. She has mentored over 100 post-doctoral and pre-doctoral researchers in her lab.

National Center for Global Health and Medicine

1989 The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Science, completed.
1989-2000 Researcher, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science,
2000-2003 Associate professor, Dept. Immune Regul. Graduate School,
Tokyo Medical and Dental University
2003-2010 Division Head, Div. Gastrointestinal Diseases
Research institute, International Medical Center of Japan,
2010-present Project Director, Dept. Molecular Immunol. Inflamm.
Research Institute, National Center for Global Health and Medicine,

Visiting professor, Tokyo Medical and Dental University
Visiting professor, Juntendo University
Japan Society of Immunology, Board member

The Japanese Biochemical Society, member
International Immunology, Associate editor
Science Council of Japan, Specialty Committee member.

Monash University

Professor Stephen Turner is Head of the Department of Microbiology, Monash University and the President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Immunology. He was awarded his PhD in Viral Immunology from Monash University in 1997. He trained with Nobel Laureate, Professor Peter Doherty (St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, USA) to work on influenza virus-specific T cell immunity before returning to the University of Melbourne in 2002, to establish his own research group. His research interests utilize a combination of structural biology, genomics, systems biology, recombinant viral technology and cellular immunology to examine molecular factors that impact T cell responses to virus infection.

University of Oxford

Prof Irina Udalova has a multidisciplinary research background, with honorous degree in physics and mathematics and PhD in molecular biology from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Research in her Genomics of Inflammation group at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford, focuses on understanding the genomic aspects of inflammatory diseases. She has identified molecular switches which act as master regulators of myeloid cells and control various immunopathologies. She aspires to translate these fundamental discoveries into new clinical interventions.

University of Oxford

Holm Uhlig is a Professor of Paediatric Gastroenterology in the Translational Gastroenterology Unit, University of Oxford and Children’s Hospital Oxford. After Medical training in Leipzig, he received his DPhil in Oxford. He specialised subsequently in Paediatric Gastroenterology in Germany. After returning to Oxford in 2010, Holm’s research is focused on genetics and immunology of inflammatory bowel disease. Holm sees patients with rare forms of inflammatory bowel disease such as Primary Immunodeficiencies that can present with Crohn’s disease and tries to understand the mechanisms that cause intestinal inflammation.

The Centre for Arthritis and Rheumatic Disease

Douglas Veale MD, FRCPI, FRCP(Lon) is Professor of Medicine, Director of Translational Research, University College of Dublin. He is a consultant rheumatologist at St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, Ireland and Lead of the EULAR Centre of Excellence for Arthritis and Rheumatic Disease. He is a fellow at the Conway Institute for Biomedical and Biomolecular Research at the University College Dublin in Dublin, Ireland. He is a fellow of both the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland and the Royal College of Physicians, London. Prof. Veale’s primary research interests include inflammatory arthritis, novel biopharmaceutical therapies, and mechanisms of disease in rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis. He has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed articles, reviews, and book chapters.

University of Southampton

Professor Tom Wilkinson is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Southampton, Faculty of Medicine and Honorary Consultant at University Hospitals Southampton. He trained at the University of Cambridge and Barts and the London School of Medicine and completed his PhD at UCL studying disease mechanisms driving Infective Exacerbations of COPD. He is lead of the Southampton COPD research group, and Airways disease research theme lead for the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre. His research seeks to improve understanding of the mechanisms which drive susceptibility to respiratory infections and exacerbations in patients with chronic lung disease, and to develop new vaccines and therapies to impact on these. He is leading a number of studies developing new treatments for COVID-19.

MIT

C.P. Dubbs Professor in the Koch Institute at MIT, and the Departments of Chemical and Biological Engineering.

Rockefeller University

I’m a pediatrician trained in Shanghai. I focus my research on inborn errors of immunity (IEIs) in patients with severe viral infections and the underlying immunological mechanisms.