Hengstberger Symposium on "Systems Immunology and Vaccine design"

Vaccines are one of the most important interventions in disease management and public health. They use the ability of our immune system to memorize previous infections, making it able to respond faster and stronger to subsequent infections with the same pathogen.

Despite frequent use many aspects of the generation of immunological memory still remain to be solved: How many immune cells are generated during an infection/ vaccination, and how many cells are needed for efficient protection against certain pathogens? What is the capacity of our immunological memory, and how often do we have to booster our memories? Interpreting experimental data with mathematical models and bioinformatical tools is essential to address these questions and to develop effective vaccination strategies.

The 2-day Hengstberger-Symposium on "Systems Immunology and Vaccine design" at the IWH brought together immunologists, virologists and parasitologists with mathematical modellers and system biologists to discuss novel ways for systematic vaccine design. The more than 50 international and local partcipants comprised renown experts, as well as young researchers and PhD students. The talks addressed various aspects in the context of T- and B-cell immunology, the generation and maintenance of immunological memory, or the development of optimal vaccination regimes against influenza or malaria. They led to intensive discussions stressing the importance of an interdisciplinary approach combining mathematical and theoretical approaches with experimental data in order to get a systems level understanding about the processes shaping and generating immunological memory.

The symposium provided the opportunity to intensify existing and generate novel collaborations between experimental and theoretical scientists that will potentially lead to novel insights for the effective design of vaccines in the future.

Contact: SysVaccine2017(at)bioquant.uni-heidelberg.de