Active participation of CliNK at the 3rd European Immunology Congress

As timely posted in our Web and Facebook page, several members of CliNK actively participated in the 3rd European Congress of Immunology (ECI), celebrated in Glasgow from the 5th to 9th September.

Miguel López-Botet belonged to the scientific organizing committee and have contributed to the high quality of the scientific session organization.

The City of Glasgow Pipers at the Civic Reception

The first day, the ECI Bright Sparks in Immunology session was followed by the keynote lecture by Nobel Prize Winner Sir Martin Evans at the Opening Ceremony followed by a welcome to Glasgow and Scotland from the Lord Provost. A company of Pipers from the city of Glasgow accompanied the following Civic Reception.

The second day, the great number of scientific sessions began, and it is impossible to summarize all of them in a small space, so we will signal some of those with more interest to the CliNK thematic.

Of those, the first was the Symposium on “Recognition of dysregulated self”, in which Eric Vivier spoke about the plasticity of NK cells and their role in immune effector and regulatory functions and Alessandro Moretta about data on NK cell maturation driven by human cytomegalovirus (CMV) after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. In the symposium devoted to extreme immunological phenotypes and immune deficiencies, Gillian Griffiths presented her recent and past work on the control of CTL degranulation, based in part in immune pathologies characterized by defective degranulation. In the afternoon, an interesting workshop was devoted to Lymphocyte signaling mechanisms, and another one to Tolerance and apoptosis, with communications offering recent advances in the field.  

Dr. López-Botet during his talk at the plenary symposium

Next day, Dr. López-Botet gave a talk in the plenary Symposium devoted to Immunity to infection. The talk was entitled “CMV infection reshapes the human NK cell compartment promoting a persistent expansion of CD94/NKG2C+ cells”. 

This same day, Alberto Anel was the chairman, together with Daniel Pinschewer, of the Workshop devoted to cytolytic T cells, in which several aspects of CTL biology were analyzed, from the proteomic characterization of different types of cytotoxic granules (Ottmar Janssen) to the anti-tumor mechanisms used by CTL to eliminate tumors upon anti-CD137 mAb treatment (Ignacio Melero & Julián Pardo). Another workshop was devoted to tumor immunology, with recent advances, promise of future immunotherapy treatments.

The last day of the Congress offered a Symposium on Cancer, with talks by Hans Stauss on adoptive T cell therapy of cancer, of which those directed to the Wilms tumor 1 antigen goes to the clinic in 2013, and by Alberto Mantovani on the dark side of inflammation and macrophages as tumor promoters. We finished with the Worskhop more interesting to CliNK, that devoted to NK cells, with Peter Höglund and Angela Santoni as chairmen. All the talks were on relevant recent advances, with Mariella della Chiesa from the Moretta lab talking on the development of human NK cells after intrabone umbilical cord blood transplantation and Chiara Romagnani on the dynamics of differentiating and adoptively transferred NK cells in patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

Aura Muntasell at her poster

In addition, several members of the López-Botet group also participated in the Congress, with Aura  Muntasell presenting the poster entitled “Recognition of Human Cytomegalovirus by NK cells”, related with the ability of the human cytomegalovirus to activate NK cells, and Diogo Baia that entitled “The LILRB1 inhibitory receptor specific for HLA class I molecules regulates macrophage activation in response to tumour cells”.

Elena Catalán at her poste

Elena Catalán, from the Anel lab, also presented the poster entitled “MHC-I modulation due to metabolic changes regulates tumor sensitivity to NK cells”, related with the relationship between glucidic metabolism in tumors and their sensitivity to NK cell-mediated cytotoxicity, work developed inside the CliNK consortium in collaboration with the group of Martín Villalba.

Julián Pardo also assisted to the congress sessions, presenting a communication related with the antitumoral potential of CTL entitled “In vivo elimination of drug-resistant tumor cells by cytotoxic T cells through a perforin/granzyme B-dependent mechanism”