OVERVIEW

Innate Immunity: Molecular Mechanisms, Diseases & Therapeutics is organized by Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology and will be held from Jan 11 - 14, 2027 at Fairmont Banff Springs in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

Description:
As the first line of defense, innate immunity kickstarts all downstream immunity. All therapeutics that require adaptive immunity—including cancer immunotherapy—cannot succeed without appropriate and specific activation of innate immunity. Innate immunity does not react to specific threats but rather to molecular patterns that assemble pathogens and can react to self DNA and RNA inappropriately during trauma, aging, autoimmune syndromes, or after infection. Innate immunity is a fertile ground for therapeutic development both for its activation and inhibition, and is poised for small molecule drug development because the pathways all recognize small molecule patterns. Key challenges are achieving self versus non-self specificity in agonist development and understanding master regulators and drug targets in antagonist development.

This Keystone Symposia conference on Innate Immunity: Molecular Mechanisms, Diseases and Therapeutics will be molecular and mechanistic in focus, discussing the relevance of each pathway in disease settings with emphasis on therapeutic relevance, and presenting first-generation drugs targeting nucleic acid sensing pathways and their performance in clinical trials.

The meeting will be strengthened through joint talks with the Keystone Symposia conference on T Cells: From Basic Biology to Therapeutic Applications that specifically elucidate how innate immune pathways crosstalk with intended or unintended T cell activation. By bringing together biochemists, molecular biologists, clinicians, and drug developers under one roof, this meeting facilitates clinical translation of the field and fosters essential cross-disciplinary collaboration.

This meeting positions itself as a unique forum that bridges molecular mechanisms with clinical outcomes, accelerating therapeutic translation at a critical moment when innate immunity has emerged as central to cancer immunotherapy and other therapeutic applications.