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“Dangerous Thoughts on Immunotherapy” given by Polly C. Matzinger, Ph.D. Senior Investigator, Ghost Lab, Laboratory of Immunogenetics, NAID/NIH

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

ImVacS 2015 (August 24-28 in Boston, MA) will play host to over 350 international scientists and executives who come together annually to continue advancing immunotherapies and vaccines through technology and innovation. I am especially pleased that this year’s ImVacS will feature a plenary keynote address “Dangerous Thoughts on Immunotherapy” given by Polly C. Matzinger, Ph.D. Senior Investigator, Ghost Lab, Laboratory of Immunogenetics, NAID/NIH. In this talk Dr. Matzinger will delineate the different predictions from the various models of immunity and show how they influence how we approach immunotherapy.

About Polly Matzinger, Ph.D.

Polly Matzinger is currently the chief of the Ghost lab, and the section on T Cell Tolerance and Memory at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. She worried for years that the dominant model of immunity does not explain a wealth of accumulated data and proposed an alternative, the Danger model, which suggests that the immune system is far less concerned with things that are foreign than with those that do damage. This model, whose two major tenets were conceived in a bath and on a field while herding sheep, has very few assumptions and yet explains most of what the immune system seems to do right, as well as most of what it appears to do wrong, covering such areas as transplantation, autoimmunity, and the immunobiology of tumors. The model has been the subject of a BBC “horizon” film and has featured in three other films about immunity, and countless articles in both the scientific and the lay press. In her spare time, Polly trains border collies for competitive shepherding trials, composes songs that are not really worth listening to, and is working on the next major question in the immune system, namely “once it decides to respond, how does the immune system know what kind of response to make?” A first answer to this question seems to be “local tissues send instructions to immune cells, guiding them to make the right kind of response.” This has major implications for autoimmunity, cancer immunotherapy, and vaccine design.

For full conference details please visit ImVacS.com or view the agenda pdf. There is an early registration discount of up to $400 if you register by June 5.

I hope you’ll join us this August in Boston to learn from leaders in vaccines and immunotherapy!

Best Regards,

Samantha Lewis

Conference Producer

CHI

slewis@healthtech.com

ImVacS 2015 At-A-Glance

Cambridge Healthtech Institute, 250 First Avenue, Suite 300, Needham, MA 02494 healthtech.com

Tel: 781-972-5400 | Fax: 781-972-5425

SOURCE

From: Samantha Lewis <pete@imvacs.com>

Date: Tuesday, May 12, 2015 at 1:47 PM

To: Aviva Lev-Ari <avivalev-ari@alum.berkeley.edu>

Subject: Polly Matzinger Ph.D. of Ghost Lab to Discuss “Dangerous Thoughts on Immunotherapy”