The inaugural Exeter Immunology Symposium gave the South West's immunologists a meeting to call their own and a chance to show off science ranging from cancer-fighting T cells to the body's uneasy truce with fungi. Peter Cook and William Horsnell report...
In June, just two years after forming our British Society for Immunology regional group, we held the inaugural Exeter Immunology Symposium at the Rougemont Hotel in the heart of Exeter. Delegates came from across the South West, and a good number from further afield in the UK. Getting everyone into one room — across institutions, cities and career stages — felt like an achievement in itself, and the two days that followed more than repaid it.
The talk topics ranged widely. James Pearson, University of Birmingham, argued that in immunology, timing is everything: give a therapy that calms the immune attack behind type 1 diabetes at the right hour of the day, and it works markedly better. From Cardiff, Andy Sewell posed a bolder question. Could one kind of T cell be trained to recognise and destroy many different cancers at once, opening the door to more universal cancer therapies? Gina Doody, University of Leeds, turned to the plasma cells that act as the body's antibody factories, and Matthew O'Shea, also from Birmingham, took on a stubborn puzzle: why some people exposed to tuberculosis fall ill while others never do.
Fungi were a thread running through both days, and they deserve far more attention than they get. Fungal infections are linked to more than two million deaths a year, yet they remain under-recognised and, as drug resistance spreads, ever harder to treat. Exeter has become a natural home for this work: the University hosts the MRC Centre for Medical Mycology, the UK's national centre for fungal disease research and one of the largest concentrations of expertise of its kind anywhere in the world. Salomé Leibundgut-Landmann, Universities of Zurich and Exeter, described the delicate balance the immune system must strike: clearing the fungi that live harmlessly on our skin and in our gut without leaving us exposed to invasive infection. Georgios Chamilos, University of Crete, went deeper still, into the machinery innate immune cells use to swallow and destroy fungi when that peace breaks down.
Early-career researchers were not an afterthought here; they were the point. Most of the talks and posters came from PhD students and postdocs, who presented alongside the invited speakers rather than being tucked away at the margins. Small BSI Travel and Carers' Grants helped several of them make the trip: modest sums, but enough to mean people were there who otherwise could not have been. Prizes went to Jake Elton, University of Exeter, for the best talk, Chloe Moscrop, University of Bristol, as runner-up, and Fannie Chan, University of Bristol, for the best poster. Congratulations to all three.
What struck us most, though, was harder to fit on a slide. The most rewarding part of the two days was watching researchers from different institutions and campuses, many of whom had never properly met, find each other over coffee and posters. Representatives from the British Society for Immunology were there too, and we thank them for their expert help in creating such a welcoming atmosphere. Our thanks also go to Pixelgen Technologies for their generous sponsorship, and to everyone who spoke, presented and took part. And none of it would have happened without our fellow members of the BSI Exeter Immunology Group committee: Émer Hickey, Teifion Luckett, Sophie Walker and Emily Plumpton, whose energy and hard work turned the idea into two very full days.
The first symposium did what we hoped it would: it brought the region's immunologists together and showed the strength of the science being done here. Through our new seminar series and future symposia, we want to keep that door open, and to invite colleagues across the UK to come and see for themselves just how much immunology is now happening in the South West.
Peter Cook and William Horsnell are co-chairs of the BSI Exeter Immunology Group.