Maialen Sebastian de la Cruz, Ph.D.
Department of Genetics, Physical Anthropology and Animal Physiology, University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Leioa, Spain
Biobizkaia Health Research Intitute, Barakaldo, Spain
The 11th Annual Meeting of the International Cytokine & Interferon Society (ICIS) took place at the Divani Caravel Hotel in Athens, Greece, from October 15th to 18th, 2023. This conference was a hybrid meeting that included a broad mix of both in-person and virtual scientific presentations (https://athens.cytokinesociety.org/). The meeting was attended by 649 registrants from 45 different countries. The program included two Keynote Lectures, three Plenary Sessions, 14 Symposia, four Lightning Talk sessions and three Poster Sessions, with a total of 39 invited speaker presentations, 48 oral presentations, 25 lightning talk presentations and 327 poster presentations.
The meeting began in the afternoon of Sunday, October 15th. Before the Opening Session and Awards Ceremony, there was an introductory session entitled “Cytokines in the airway and inflammation” that was sponsored by the Korean Association of Immunologists KAI. Afterwards, the Opening Session and Awards Ceremony started with the welcome remarks by Dr. Evangelos Andreakos (Academy of Athens, Greece) and Dr. Christopher Hunter, President of ICIS (University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA), followed by presentation of several of the 2023 ICIS award winners. Dr. Dusan Bogunovic (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY, USA) received the ICIS-LUMINEX John R. Kettman Award for Excellence in Cytokine & Interferon Research. Dr. Jacob S. Yount (The Ohio State University, OH, USA) received the ICIS Mentorship Award. Dr. Daniela Novick (The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel) was awarded with the Honorary Lifetime Membership Award, and Dr. Brendan J. Jenkins (The University of Adelaide, Australia) received the ICIS Distinguished Service Award.
Next, the Young Investigator Award winners were presented: Dr. Edward Chuong (University of Colorado, CO, USA), Dr. Ruth A. Franklin (Harvard University, MA, USA), and Dr. Marlies Meisel (University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA) and Dr. Robert A. Saxton (University of California, CA, USA) received the ICIS-Regeneron New Investigator Awards; Dr. Ang Cui (Harvard University, MA, USA) received the Christina Fleischmann Young Investigator Award; Noémie Alphonse (King’s College London, UK) and Dr. Simone L. Park (University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA) were awarded with the PBL – Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate & and Post Graduate Awards, respectively, sponsored by PBL Assay Science. Dr. Chao Yang (National Clinical Research Centre for Infectious Diseases, China) received the Amanda Proudfoot Tribute Award; and Robert Maples (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX, USA), Iolanda Miceli (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia), Dr. Maria Salagianni (Biomedical Research Foundation Academy of Athens, Greece), and Jihyun Yu (Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, Republic of Korea) were awarded with ICIS-Pfizer Junior Investigator Awards. Finally, the Opening Session and Awards Ceremony were closed with two interesting talks given by Dr. Judy Lieberman (Harvard Medical School/Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, USA), the ICIS-Pfizer Award for Excellence in Cytokine & Interferon Research award winner and Dr. Daniel J. Cua, (Janssen Research & Development, US), the ICIS-BioLegend William E. Paul award winner.
Following the presentations by Dr. Lieberman and Dr. Cua, and after a short break and visit with the Exhibitors, the first Keynote Lecture was delivered by Dr. George Yancopoulos (Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, USA). He presented a very encouraging talk entitled “Diseases, cytokines and new treatments” in which he described the long process from the difficult beginning of his company (Regeneron) until its actual success in developing several biopharmaceutical drug products. The first day of the Cytokines 2023 conference finished with a Welcome Reception on the rooftop of the hotel, the Roof Garden Floor, where all meeting attendees had the chance to enjoy a tasty meal and the beautiful views of Athens at dusk.
The second day of the conference, Monday October 16th, began with the first Plenary Session on “Cytokines in precision medicine, targeted diagnosis and treatment”, supported by Pfizer. This session included three invited speakers and two short presentations by speakers selected from the pool of submitted abstracts. The first invited speaker was Dr. Anne O’Garra (The Francis Crick Institute, UK), and the title of her presentation was “Cytokines orchestrating immune responses to infection with a focus on tuberculosis: How transcriptomics can lead the way”. The second invited speaker was Dr. Burkhard Becher (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and the title of the presentation was “Immune mechanisms in neuroinflammation”. The third invited speaker was David Artis (Weill Cornell Medicine, NYC, USA), and the title of his presentation was “Neuronal regulation of innate immunity and inflammation”. Afterwards, Dr. Susan Carpenter (University of California Santa Cruz, CA, USA) gave the talk “High throughput CRISPRi screen identifies the long noncoding RNA LOUP as a multi-functional locus important in immunity” in which she described the different mechanisms by which this lncRNA exerts its functions. Last but not least, Pfizer Trainee Award Winner, Iolanda Miceli (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia), presented her talk with the title “A novel E3 ligase of GILZ: a target to suppress multiple cytokine pathways and bypass the metabolic adverse effects of glucocorticoids in autoimmune disease treatments”.
The scientific program continued with two separate symposia. Symposium 1 was entitled “Macrophages and dendritic cell at the single cell biology era” and it was supported by Abbvie. Symposium 2 was entitled “Cytokines in T cell development and function” and it was supported by Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). Each of these sessions included two invited speakers and three short talks by speakers who were chosen from the pool of submitted abstracts. The first invited speaker in Symposium 1 was Dr. Dmitry Gabrilovich (Astrazeneca, USA). The title of his presentation was “Functional states of macrophages in cancer”. The second invited speaker in Symposium 1 was Dr. Roxane Tussiwand (National Institute of Health, USA) and she presented a talk entitled “Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells: from development to function”. Later, 2023 ICIS-Regeneron New Investigator Award Winner, Dr. Ruth Franklin (Harvard University, MA, USA), presented her work on “Macrophages control pathological type I interferon responses following viral respiratory infection”, followed by short presentations by Dr. Christian Pace (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) and Dr. Jason Brenchley (National Institute of Health, USA).
The first speaker in Symposium 2 was Dr. Sarah Gaffen (University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA) and her lecture was entitled “IL-17 Signal Transduction crosstalk”. The second invited speaker in Symposium 2 was Dr. Christina E. Zielinski (Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, Germany) and the title of her presentation was “Th17 specialization in the microenvironment”. Afterwards, the PBL – Sidney & Joan Pestka Post Graduate Award Winner, Simone Park (University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA), presented her talk with the title of “Divergent molecular and cytokine networks program functionally distinct CD8+ skin-resident memory T cells. Her work revealed the different populations among skin-resident memory T cells and emphasized the importance of taking into account such differences when treating certain immune-related pathologies. The other two short presentations were delivered by Dr. Simon Jones (The School of Medicine, Cardiff University, UK) and Michela Locci (University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA).
The afternoon of Day 2 started with two separate symposia. Symposium 3 was entitled “Innate lymphoid cells, heterogeneity and function” and it was supported by Eli Lilly. Symposium 4 was entitled “Immune regulation in autoimmune and rheumatic diseases, Jürg Tschopp Memorial Symposium”. The speaker format was the same as in Symposia 1 and 2. The first invited speaker in Symposium 3 was Dr. Ido Amit (The Weizmann Institute Of Science, Israel) and the title of his presentation was “Single cell immunology for deciphering disease mechanisms and treatment responses”. The second invited speaker was Dr. Kazuyo Moro (Osaka University, Japan) and her presentation was entitled “ILC2s in health and disease”. Dr. Hye-Young Kim (Seoul National University, Korea) and Dr. Michael Abt (University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA) then delivered short presentations, followed by a presentation by the Christina Fleischmann Young Investigator Award Winner, Dr. Ang Cui (Harvard University, MA, USA). She presented her impressive work on a “Dictionary of immune responses to 86 cytokines in vivo at single-cell resolution” in which she described how they analyze the transcriptomic profiles of 17 immune cells and other non-immune cells at single-cell resolution after inoculating mice with each of 86 cytokines. She introduced the newly developed Immune Response Enrichment Analysis (IREA) software for evaluating the roles of specific cytokines and cell-cell communication networks in response to such cytokines.
The first invited speaker in Symposium 4: Immune regulation in autoimmune and rheumatic diseases which was designated as the Jürg Tschopp Memorial Symposium and Jürg Tschopp Memorial Lecturer was Dr. Virginia Pascual (Weill Cornell Medicine, NY, USA), and the title of her presentation was “Cytokines in systemic lupus erythematosus pathogenesis”. The second invited speaker was Dr. Alexander Rudensky (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY, USA), and his lecture was entitled “Shaping regulatory T cells in systemic inflammation and autoimmunity”. Following the first two invited speaker presentations, Dr. Jeremy Morrissette (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, USA), Dr. Roza Nurieva (The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX, USA) and Dr. Sandra Dimonte (Cardiff University, UK), delivered their talks in short presentation format.
Following Symposia 3 and 4, two separate Lightning Talk sessions took place. Some of the abstracts submitted were selected to be presented as Lightning Talks of seven to ten minutes. A total of five to seven presentations were included in each session, grouped as talks about “Cytokines in chronic diseases” and “Cytokines in infections”. The scientific program of Day 2 finished with the first Poster Session in which more than a hundred posters were displayed. The poster session provided an opportunity for the meeting attendees to speak directly with the authors about their research findings.
Day 2 ended with an excellent cultural networking event, a trip to the Acropolis Museum in central Athens. Those who attended the networking event at the Acropolis Museum received a highly informative lecture about Greek culture by the expert guides at the museum, followed by a reception with a view of the Parthenon.
Day 3 on Tuesday October 17th began with the second Plenary Session of the conference, entitled “Lambda interferons at 20 years of age.” This session was supported by the Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR) on behalf of Mary Ann Liebert Publishing, Inc. The first invited speaker was Dr. Sergei Kotenko (Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, NJ, USA), and he delivered a presentation entitled “Lamba interferons, from discovery to biology and therapy” in which he summarized very competently the knowledge we have so far about Lambda interferons. The second invited speaker was Dr. Andreas Wack (Francis Crick Institute, UK) and his presentation was entitled “Type I vs III interferons in antiviral immunity.” The third invited speaker was Dr. Evangelos Andreakos, and the title of his talk was “Novel functions of lambda interferons”. Following the presentations by the first three invited speaker, Dr Tobias Hohl (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY, USA) delivered a short presentation entitled “IL-1 and type III IFN-dependent regulation of GM-CSF promotes epithelial-immune cell crosstalk and orchestrates immunity to Aspergillus fumigatus in the lung”. Finally, PBL – Sydney & Joan Pestka Graduate Award Winner, Noémie Alphonse (King’s College London, UK), presented her work on “Type I and III interferons exert differential roles in immunity against the enteric bacteria Salmonella.” She showed that unlike type I interferons, type III interferons play a significant role in the development of bacterial colitis at the intestinal mucosal barrier.
Plenary Session 2 was followed by two additional symposia. Symposium 5 was entitled “Cytokines and interferons in COVID-19 and beyond” and it was supported by Moderna. Symposium 6 was entitled “Targeted therapies in cancer & beyond”, and it was supported by Owkin. The first invited speaker in Symposium 5 was Dr. Andrea Ablasser (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) and the title of her presentation was “The cGAS-STING pathway in immunity and immunopathology”. The second speaker was Dr. Irini Sereti (National Institutes of Health, USA) and her presentation was entitled “Immune senescence and cytokines profiles in Long COVID”. Following the presentations by the first two invited speakers, Dr. Emily Hemann (Ohio State University, USA) delivered her presentation, entitled “Interferon-lambda uniquely promotes CD8 T cell immunity against SARS-CoV-2 compared to type I interferon.” The next speaker, Dr. Edward Chuong (University of Colorado, USA) was recipient of the 2023 ICIS-Regeneron New Investigator Award. Dr Chuong gave a talk entitled “Regulation of human IFN signaling by an exonized transposon in IFNAR2” in which he described a poorly characterized IFNAR2 isoform and its effect on the IFN pathway upon viral infection. The final speaker in this session was Dr. Eleanor Fish (University of Toronto, Canada) and the title of her presentation was “Interferon-beta-1a ring prophylaxis to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”
The first invited speaker in Symposium 6 was Dr. Dimitris Skokos (Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, USA) and he presented a lecture on “Tumor-targeted co-stimulation via CD28 bispecific antibodies: Turning immunotherapy cold tumors hot.” The second invited speaker was Dr Richard Siegel (Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Switzerland) and the title of his presentation was “New frontiers in B-cell depletion: from cancer to systemic autoimmune diseases.” Afterwards, Dr. Lisa Mielke (Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute, Australia), Dr. Ertan Erylmaz (Xilio Therapeutics, USA) and Dr. Scott Durum (National Cancer Institute, USA), delivered their short presentations.
After the lunch break on Day 3, the afternoon program began with Symposia 7 and 8. Symposium 7 was entitled “Genetic of cytokines”, and it was supported by Novartis. Symposium 8 was entitled “Cytokines in mucosal immunity and allergic diseases” and it was supported by the Society for Mucosal Immunology”. The first invited speaker in Symposium 7 was Dr. Trine Mogensen (Aarhus University, Denmark) and the title of her talk was “Genetic susceptibility to viral disease in humans.” The second invited speaker and winner of the ICIS-LUMINEX John R Kettman Award was Dr. Dusan Bogunovic and he delivered a lecture entitled “Inborn Errors of Autoinflammation”. He gave a really interesting and informative talk about genetic inheritance of mutations with partial penetrance and expressivity, and introduced a new concept, called “transcriptotype,” that refers to the variations at the transcriptomic level that do not always correlate with the expected genotype. Symposium 7 also included short talks by Dr. Maialen Sebastian-delaCruz (University of the Basque Country, Spain), Dr. Jose Campos Duran (University of Pennsylvania, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, USA), and Dr. Cyrielle Hou (University of Lausanne, Switzerland).
The first invited speaker in Symposium 8 was Dr. Clare Lloyd (Imperial College London, UK) and the title of her presentation was “Cytokine networks in the respiratory epithelium”. The second invited speaker was Dr. Niki Moutsopoulos (National Institutes of Health, USA) and she delivered her talk, entitled “Stromal-neutrophil and cytokine interaction in the oral mucosa”. Afterwards, two 2023 ICIS-Pfizer Junior Investigator Award Winners presented their work, together with Dr. Amanda Poholek (University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA). Dr. Robert Maples (UT Southwestern Medical Center, TX, USA) gave a talk on “Circadian control of enteric viral infection through rhythmic IRF1-mediated innate immune responses” in which he revealed how IRF1 is regulated by circadian transcription factors and how this affects the immune response upon enteric viral infections. Jihyun Yu (Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology, Korea) delivered her presentation, entitled “GPR43 signaling in eosinophils restrains neutrophilic airway inflammation by preventing the emergence of pathogenic Siglec-Fhi neutrophils”, in which she described the role of this short-chain fatty acid receptor in eosinophilic to neutrophilic asthma progression.
Two separate Lightning Talk sessions took place between Symposia 7 and 8, and Symposia 9 and 10. These sessions were entitled “Cytokines in immunobiology” and “Novel therapeutics”, and each of them included seven short presentations lasting approximately 7 minutes each, as mentioned earlier in this report.
The last symposia sessions of Day 3 started after the afternoon coffee break. Symposium 9 was entitled “Metabolic control of cytokine-mediated inflammation” and it was supported by Olink. Symposium 10 was entitled “Latest developments and novel therapeutics” and it was sponsored by Synthekine. The first invited speaker in Symposium 9 was Dr. Luke O´Neill (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland). He presented a very compelling talk on “Immunometabolism in macrophage function”. The second invited speaker was Dr. Maria Mitelbrunn (Centro de Biología Molecular Severo Ochoa, Spain), and the title of her presentation was “T cells and age-related diseases”. Afterwards, Dr. Matthew Sweet (Institute for Molecular Bioscience, The University of Queensland, Australia), Dr. Federica Giangrazi (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) and Dr. Paul Bunk (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA) delivered their presentations in short talk format.
Symposium 10 began with an In Memoriam of Joost Oppenheim by Dr. Scott Durum (National Institutes of Health, USA). Then, the lectures and short talks continued. The first invited speaker was Dr. Michail Lionakis (National Institutes of Health, USA) and his presentation was entitled “Targeting excess IFN-gamma/STAT1 signaling in mucosal fungal disease and autoimmunity: from bench to patients”. The second invited speaker was Dr. Vassili Soumelis (Hospital St Louis & Owkin, France) and the title of his presentation was “Anti-TSLP therapeutics 20 years after the discovery of TSLP”. Next, two of the 2023 ICIS-Regeneron New Investigator Award Winners presented their work. Dr. Marlies Meisel (University of Pittsburgh, PA, USA) delivered a presentation on “Dietary tryptophan metabolite released by intratumoral Lactobacillus reuteri facilitates immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment” in which she revealed that a tryptophan-derived metabolite promotes antitumoral immunity in melanoma. Dr. Robert Saxton (University of California Berkeley, CA, USA) gave a short talk on “Structural insights into mechanism of leptin receptor activation” and he described how leptin-leptin receptor complex stimulates the JAK2-STAT3 axis in a leptin structure-dependent manner. Lastly, 2023 ICIS-Pfizer Junior Investigator Award Winner, Dr. Maria Salagianni (Biomedical Research Foundation Academy of Athens, Greece), presented her talk, entitled “Interferon lambda confers protection against cardiometabolic diseases”. She revealed a novel function for lambda interferons in the context of cardiometabolic diseases.
The scientific program on Day 3 finished with the second Poster Session that included more than a hundred posters. This session provided an excellent forum for all meeting participants to meet and speak with the poster authors about their research findings.
However, right after Poster Session 2, undergraduate and postgraduate fellows were invited to the Early Career Researcher (ECR) Networking Event on the Roof Garden Floor of the hotel. This event was cosponsored by the ICIS ECR Committee & Young EFIS. Attendees had the opportunity to meet their peers, as well as young investigators and editors of several journals in the field. This kind of event is very enriching for young researchers because it provides an ideal environment to connect with other students, potential collaborators and mentors.
The fourth and last day of the Cytokines 2023 Conference began with the third Plenary Session. The title of this session was “Cytokines in cancer immunity and immunotherapy” and it was supported by Regeneron. The first invited speaker was Dr. Rafi Ahmed (Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University, GA, USA), and his presentation was entitled “CD8+ T cells in cancer”. The second invited speaker was Dr. George Pavlakis (National Institutes of Health, USA) and he gave a talk on “Clinical development of heterodimeric IL-15 for immunotherapy”. The third invited speaker was Dr. Aaron Ring (Fred Hutchinson Center, WA, USA) and the title of his lecture was “Auto-Antibodies & Cancer”. Afterwards, Dr. Ravi Madan (National Cancer Institute, USA) delivered a presentation, entitled “Combining an IL-12-based immunocytokine (PDS0301) with Docetaxel in Metastatic Prostate Cancer: Preliminary Safety and immune data”. The final presentation in this session was given by Dr. Jun Ishihara (Imperial College London, UK) and the title of his talk was “Engineered tumor-matrix targeted IL-12 to achieve safe and efficacious therapies”.
The scientific program on Day 4 continued with two separate symposia. Symposium 11 was entitled “Novel approaches for the development of cytokine/anti-cytokine therapies” and it was supported by Cytokine Journal. Symposium 12 was entitled “Cytokines in neuro-immune interactions, inflammation and repair” and it was supported by Genentech. The first invited speaker in Symposium 11 was Dr. Savvas Savvides (Ghent University & VIB, Belgium) and his presentation was entitled “Structural basis of cytokine-mediated signaling”. The second invited speaker was Dr Rafick Sekaly (Emory University, GA, USA), and he delivered a presentation on “Interplay between metabolites and innate immunity in natural and vaccine induced immunity to viral infections”. Subsequently, Dr. Martin Oft (Synthekine, USA), Dr. Patrizia Murer (Anaveon AG, Switzerland) and Dr. Iliyan Iliev (Weill Cornell Medicine, USA) presented their work.
The first speaker in Symposium 12 was Dr. Christopher Hunter (School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, PA, USA). He delivered a lecture on “IL-27: from parasites to mRNA vaccines” in which he showed that IL-27 can be used as a potent adjuvant for vaccines for increasing their effectiveness. The second invited speaker was Dr. Sophie Ugolini (Centre d’Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, France) and the title of her presentation was “Neural pathways in the regulation of tissue inflammation and repair.” Then, Dr. Effrosyni Koronaiou (Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, Greece), Dr. Manja Thiem (LIMES Institute, University of Bonn, Germany) and Dr. Andreas Pavlou (Twincore, Germany) presented their work in selected short presentations.
The last symposia sessions started right after the lunch time poster session. Symposium 13 was entitled “Cytokines in T and B cell responses to vaccination and beyond” and it was supported by Janssen. Symposium 14 was entitled “Cytokines in HIV and novel targeted therapies”. The first invited speaker in Symposium 13 was Dr. Warren Leonard (National Institutes of Health, USA) and he presented a lecture entitled “Fine tuning IL-2 signaling via IL-2R-alpha super-enhancer”. The second invited speaker was Dr. Claudia Mauri (University College London, UK) and the title of her presentation was “IL-10-secreting B cells”. Afterwards, Dr. Kimberly Carroll (Tuffs Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, MA, USA) and Dr. Barbara Felber (National Cancer Institute at Frederick, MD, USA) presented their talks in short presentation format.
The first invited speaker in Symposium 14 was Dr. Michaela Müller-Trutwin (Institut Pasteur, France) and she delivered her presentation on “NK cells and cytokines in HIV/SIV infections”. The second invited speaker was Dr. Afam Okoye (Oregon Health & Science University, OR, USA) and his presentation was entitled “HIV and cytokines”. Following the presentations by the first two invited speaker, Dr. Jemy Varghase (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, USA), Dr. Christopher Basting (University of Minnesota, MN, US) and Dr. Raymond Kaempfer (The Hebrew University, Israel) presented their work in short talk format.
The last scientific session was Keynote Lecture 2, and the invited speaker was Dr. Federica Sallusto (Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Switzerland). She delivered an overview talk on “Human T cells subsets: activation, differentiation and immune regulation” in which she showed interesting results from single cell sequencing experiments and emphasized the importance of evaluating different T cell populations.
The Cytokines 2023 Conference came to an end with Closing Remarks by the primary organizers: Evangelos Andreakos (Academy of Athens, Greece) and George Pavlakis (National Cancer Institute, USA). The audience was invited to attend the next annual ICIS meeting: “Cytokines 2024” a Joint Meeting with KAI 2024 International in Seoul, Korea. Everyone was invited to attend the annual ICIS Members Business Meeting which took place immediately after the closing remarks by Drs. Andreakos and Pavlakis.
In the evening and until late at night, a farewell Gala Dinner took place on the Roof Garden Floor where the Metabollix band led by Dr. Luke O’Neill (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) performed for the audience. The lively dance music provided by the Metabollix band provided a fun opportunity to dance the night away with other meeting attendees after an excellent banquet style dinner. It was a perfect ending for an excellent scientific meeting. We can now look forward to next year’s ICIS annual meeting in Seoul, Korea.
