The opening press conference of the XV International Congress of Immunology, promoted and organized by the Italian Society for Immunology, Clinical Immunology and Allergology (SIICA) and the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS), will be held in Milan on August 22nd at 11 a.m. at the congress venue, MiCo (Piazzale Carlo Magno 1, gate 17 Suite 3, Level 2).
The Councillor for Job policies, Economic development, University and Research of the City of Milan, Cristina Tajani will also participate, as a representative of the city.
The participating journalists will be informed about the congress, which will bring to Milan about 5000 participants from 12 countries, with 500 speakers including three Nobel Prizes: Peter C. Doherty, Rolf M. Zinkernagel and Jules A. Hoffmann.
The press conference will be chaired by Luciano Adorini, President of the meeting and Chief science officer at Intercept Pharmaceuticals, who will also talk about private-public partnership in research.
Many relevant speakers will attend the press conference:
- Peter C. Doherty – awarded with the Nobel Prize in 1996 together with Rolf Zinkernagel for their discovery of how the immune system recognizes virus-infected cells – will provide an overview of 50 years of research about T cells cytotoxicity;
- Vincenzo Barnaba – Full Professor of Internal Medicine at the University “La Sapienza”, Rome – will explain the new approaches to break down the connections between immunity and tumors;
- Sergio Romagnani – Full Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Florence – will show how the new technologies allowed human immunology, in some cases, to do without animal experimentation;
- Rino Rappuoli – Global Responsible for Vaccines Research at Novartis, will show the new perspectives about vaccines development;
- Gianvito Martino – Director of the Division of Neuroscience of San Raffaele Hospital in Milan – will reveal the unexpected role played by immunity in a pathological condition like ictus;
- Walter Canonica – Director of the Specialty School of Pulmonary Disease of the University of Genoa – will focus on the recent discoveries in the field of the allergology;
- Alberto Mantovani – Scientific Director of Istituto Clinico Humanitas in Milan, full professor of General Pathology at the University of Milan – will talk about a new molecule which could work both as a marker for inflammation due to microbe infection and as an antimicrobic drug.
Following the press conference, at 4.45 p.m., there will be the official opening ceremony of the meeting, with the opening lectures from Jules Hoffmann, about innate immunity, and Rino Rappuoli, about the new frontiers in vaccines development.
Many eminent personalities, with great relevance at a world level, will bring to the congress their contributes in several fields of immunology, from transplants to infectious diseases like AIDS, from tumors and leukemia to allergies and arthritis, from diabetes to multiple sclerosis to stem cells and cellular therapies.
Scienceonthenet will provide streaming coverage for the Opening Ceremony, as well as all the Plenary Lectures, and will follow the Congress with a dedicated scheduling, including daily interviews and newsletters.
Eminent prizes will be awarded during the course of the congress, like the Else Kröner Fresenius Award 2013, which will appoint 4 milions euro to Ruslan Medzhitov, Professor of Immunobiology at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Yale, who identified the Toll-like receptor (TLR) and revealed its role in the induction of inflammatory immune response.
Other prizes will be awarded to young researchers, who received particular attention from the organizer. 300 young scientists will participate to the meeting supported by fellowships supplied by the meeting itself or by several national immunologic societies; fifty of this 300, of African origin, will be supported by fellowships provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Congress website: http://www.ici2013.org/home/
Press office: Zadig [email protected]
Organizing secretariat: Triumph group [email protected]
