Adjuvants and molecular level interactions are driving forward the fields of vaccine development and understanding of innate immunity. Adjuvants combine understanding of chemical syntheses, molecular level interactions, immunological readouts, cellular trafficking, and systems biology. It's a diverse set of researchers. Intriguingly, many of them have never met, nor do they even know who each other are. There exists divides between industry, academia, and immunologist, chemical biologists and engineers - all working to solve similar problems from very different perspectives. The goal of this meeting is to bring this diverse set of people together for the first time. We plan to inclde researchers from multiple continents and our organization group reflects that. The meeting is organized by Aaron Esser-Kahn (University of California, Irvine), and Bruno DeGeest (University of Ghent, Belgium), who together have assembled a world- class program of committee invited speakers that are among the most influential leaders in adjuvants and immune-activating materials. The sole use of requested NIH funds is to support the participation of students, postdocs, untenured faculty and underrepresented minority invited speakers in this symposium. A conference designed to unite synthetic chemists, immunologists and vaccine development experts to move forward the field of immuno-stimulants.

R13AI118141

2015-03-01

2016-02-29