The meeting “Understanding dendritic cells and their ability to regulate immune responses” held on 16th November 2007 at the BioPark brought together a great mix of participants to discuss the roles of different DC subsets in immunoregulation.
Professor Stella Knight started the day with a talk about the special properties of adipose tissue present in lymph nodes which may provide immunoregulatory factors for local immune activation.
Dr Janine Coombes followed with a discussion of the regulatory properties of mucosal CD103+ dendritic cells.
Dr Giovanna Lombardi told us that the plasmacytoid DC subset is now recognised as playing a crucial role in autoimmunity and tolerance and that work is ongoing to assess their ability to prevent allo-responses in heart and skin transplant models.
The development of vaccine candidates to HIV infection was the theme of Dr Steve Patterson’s talk. The skin is rich in DCs and thus is attractive as a vaccination site. Examination of the TLR profile and TLR-ligand induced cytokine responses from skin DCs indicate that these may be of relevance for vaccine development.
Dr Moein Moghime spoke about the role of DCs in the transportation of nanoparticles from interstitial injection sites to regional lymph nodes and how such particles may be engineered for particular applications.
The role of the NOD2 receptor in Crohn’s disease was discussed by Dr Alison Simmons. Gene expression profiles of NOD2 activated DCs using genomic and proteomic techniques were used to unravel the transcriptional regulatory elements controlling NOD2 signalling and to show the induction of specific immune modulators.
Dr Jagadeesh Barry spoke about the regulation of DCs by regulatory T cells and showed that Tregs induce semi-mature DC with potential for migration into lymphoid organs, a mechanism for down-modulation of immune responses by Tregs.
The regulation of DC migration was presented by Dr Yolande Calle.
Dr Sonia Quaratino discussed the split personality of myeloid derived suppressor cells.
From the Feedback Forms
Delegates were satisfied with the meeting and considered it to be value for money and would attend this meeting again or come to another of our meetings.
Other techniques delegates would have liked to have heard about?
- Purification of human DC subsets
- Very interesting presentations – reflecting different aspects
- Very well put together with talks following logically after one another
- Enjoyed this meeting very much
- Excellent panel of speakers and excellent talks
- Good opportunity to talk to the other scientists, especially those prominent in the field
We had one comment from a delegate that “colleagues were put off by the registration fee”. Our prices rise after the early registration deadline in order to encourage early registration for administrative purposes. If you find that you have just missed the early registration deadline for any of our events we would be happy to discuss a reduction in the fee, as we would never want to discourage delegates from attending an event due to post deadline prices.
Other meetings we are considering Delegates from this meeting made suggestions to organise meetings on “Adoptive transfer and therapy”, “Autoimmunity” and “Nanotoxicology”. We had already scheduled the following meetings: Nanotoxicology: Health & Environmental Impacts 27 February 2009 www.regonline.co.uk/nano09 Identifying T cell subsets in Autoimmunity 11 March 2011 www.regonline.co.uk/autoimmune11 If anyone is interested in attending or speaking at any of these meeting please email our managing director sharacohen@euroscicon.com who would be happy to discuss this with you further. With many thanks to everyone who participated in this successful event, your comments here are very welcome Gail Dr Gail Whiting