The FOCIS 2023 Annual Meeting is THE meeting in translational immunology. FOCIS brings together leading clinicians and researchers delivering the latest breakthroughs across immunology.
FOCIS Scientific Program
2023 Keynote Speakers
Featured Speakers:
Here are the FOCIS 2023 Featured Speakers:
| Greg Allen, PhD, MD | Heinrich Jasper, PhD |
Francisco Quintana, PhD
|
| Michael Brenner, MD | Carl June, MD | Isabelle Riviere, PhD |
| Lori Broderick, MD, PhD | David Klatzmann, MD, PhD | William H. Robinson, MD, PhD |
| Supinda Bunyavanich, MD | Matthew Krummel, PhD | Antoine Roquilly, PhD |
| Anita Chong, PhD | Alessio Lanna, PhD | Hélène Salmon, PhD |
| Andrea Cossarizza, PhD | Yu Liang, PhD | Pere Santamaria, MD, PhD |
| Carolin Daniel, PhD | Roland Liblau, PhD | Alexandra Santos, MD, MSc, MRCPCH, FHEA, PhD |
| Jianing Fu, PhD | Xunrong Luo, MD, PhD | Carmen Scheibenbogen, MD |
| Keishi Fujio, PhD | Marcela Maus, MD, PhD | Daniella Schwartz, MD |
| Laurie Glimcher, MD | Brent McKenzie, PhD | Dean Sheppard, MD |
| Nir Hacohen, PhD | Mohamed Mohiuddin, MD | Stuart Turvey, MD, MS |
| Nicholas Haining, BM, BCh | Niranjana Nagarajan, PhD | Lynn van Olst, PhD |
| Fabian Hauck, MD, PhD | Luigi Naldini, MD, PhD | Carola Vinuesa, MD, PhD |
| Timothy Henrich, MD | Laura Niedernhofer, MD, PhD | Jakob Von Moltke, PhD |
| Marcelo Hill, PhD | Fabiana Perna, MD, PhD | Thomas Wynn, PhD |
| Andrea Itano, PhD | Fiona Powrie, FRS | Maria Yazdanbakhsh, PhD |
Plenary Sessions
- Adaptive/Autoimmunity
- Atopic Diseases: Allergy/Type2/Helminth
- Engineered CAR-cells in Oncology
- Fibrosis and Wound Healing
- ImmunoOncology
- Sequelae of Infectious Diseases
Thematic Sessions
- Cutting Edge of Transplantation
- Engineered Cell Therapy – Non-oncology
- Disorders of Humoral Immunity
- Disorders of Innate Immunity
- Immunity Across the Ages
- Microbiome/Mucosal Immunity
- Neuroimmunology
- Precision Diagnostics for Immune Disorders
- Tolerance Therapeutics
Speaker Biographies
Laurie Glimcher, MD
Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center
is the President and CEO of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and the Richard and Susan Smith Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Previously, she was the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean and Professor of Medicine of Weill Cornell Medicine and Provost for Medical Affairs of Cornell University.
She is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the American Philosophical Society, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the former President of the American Association of Immunologists. She is a member of the Cancer Research Institute, Prix Galien, Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, Repare Therapeutics, Abpro Therapeutics, BioSciences, Inc. Scientific Advisory Boards, the Lasker Award Jury, the American Association for Cancer Research, Association of American Cancer Institutes, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology and served on the Vice President’s Blue Ribbon panel. Dr. Glimcher previously served on the Board of Directors of Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Corporation, the Waters Corporation and GSK plc. She currently serves as a consultant for the JPM Healthcare Advisory committee and is on the Board of Directors of Analog Devices, Inc.
Dr. Glimcher’s research identified key transcriptional regulators of protective immunity and the origin of pathophysiologic immune responses underlying autoimmune, infectious and malignant diseases. Dr. Glimcher speaks nationally and internationally on cancer, immunology, and translational medicine and has contributed more than 350 scholarly articles and papers to the medical literature.
Aside from her research efforts, Dr. Glimcher has been a staunch proponent of improved access to care, health policy, and medical education, while simultaneously serving as a pioneering mentor and role model for cancer research trainees and for all women in science. Notably, she was the first female to be appointed as dean of Weill Cornell Medicine in New York and is the first female President and Chief Executive Officer of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
Fiona Powire, FRS, FMedSci, DBE
Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology
Professor Dame Fiona Powrie is Director of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Governor of the Wellcome Trust.
She gained a PhD in immunology at the University of Oxford and then moved to the DNAX Research Institute in Palo Alto, before returning to Oxford in 1996 as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. Prior to her appointment to the Kennedy Institute, Fiona Powrie was the Sidney Truelove Professor of Gastroenterology and Head of the Translational Gastroenterology Unit, Oxford (2009- 2014).
Her research examines the relationship between the intestinal microbiome and the host immune system and how this mutualistic relationship breaks down in inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and cancer.
Fiona Powrie has received numerous prestigious prizes and awards, including the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2012. She was elected an international member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020 and was appointed Deputy Chair of the Wellcome Board of Governors and Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE), for services to Medical Science, in 2022.
Carl June, MD
University of Pennsylvania
Dr. June is the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and is currently Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at the Perelman School of Medicine, and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the University of Pennsylvania. The CAR T cells invented in the June laboratory were awarded “Breakthrough Therapy” status by the FDA for acute leukemia in children and adults in 2014 and were approved by the FDA for acute leukemia in 2017 and afterwards, for diffuse large B cell lymphoma. These accomplishments have been recognized by the White House on several occasions. He has published more than 500 manuscripts and is the recipient of numerous honors, including election to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.
Nir Hacohen, PhD
Harvard Medical School
Dr. Hacohen has pioneered systems biology tools that generate comprehensive cellular and molecular models of immunological processes and enable personalized immunotherapies. In the area of cell-level systems biology, he carried out genome-wide genetic screens in primary immune cells and identified genetic variants, transcription factors, chromatin regulators, signaling proteins, RNA and protein synthesis-degradation mechanisms, and splicing factors driving the sensing of pathogens by myeloid cells. In the area of cell type discovery, he contributed to the Human Cell Atlas by discovering new immune cell types including human dendritic cell subsets and their progenitors as well as T cells and their differentiation states. He also identified cell states associated with disease in bacterial/viral sepsis, lupus nephritis, and cancer immunity, and discovered spatially organized immune cell structures in tumors. In the area of cancer vaccines, he created machine learning-based methods to predict cancer antigens, and developed the first personalized approach to immunotherapy using vaccines that target patient-specific tumor neoantigens. This led to clinical trials in melanoma and glioblastoma multiforme, demonstrating induction of tumor-specific T cells that kill malignant cells and are durable for many years. His lab is currently working on using systems-level technologies to understand mechanisms of human immune diseases and model them in mice, with the goal of catalyzing new therapeutic strategies.
Hacohen is an institute member and the director of the Center for Cell Circuits at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is the director of the Center for Cancer Immunology at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the David P. Ryan Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Hacohen is a recipient of the NIH Director’s Innovator Award, the MGH Scholars Award, and the Martin Prize. He completed his Ph.D. in biochemistry at Stanford, and was a fellow at the Whitehead Institute at MIT. Hacohen developed an international workshop for advancing the careers of young cancer immunologists. He also founded Neon Therapeutics, which is now part of BioNTech.