: Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia meeting entitled Cell Biology and Immunology of Persistent Infection, organized by Herbert (Skip) W. Virgin, E. John Wherry, Anne O'Garra and Andrea Lynn Cox. The meeting will be held in Banff, Alberta, Canada from January 31-February 4, 2016. Persistent infections are a major source of morbidity and mortality around the world. However, it is increasingly clear that the bacterial microbiome, the virome, and the mycobiome can have beneficial roles for the host. Chronic infections with pathogens represent a failure of sterilizing immunity, but the mechanisms responsible for persistence and the balance between host health and disease resulting from infection are not completely understood. Recent discoveries reveal that multiple components of both the infecting organism and the host response to infection determine infection outcome, illustrating that a range of disciplines must be brought together to understand the fundamental mechanisms of chronic infection. This symposium is designed to bring together diverse communities of researchers at the cutting edge of their fields to understand whether and how to manipulate persistent infections to prevent disease and enhance health.
The study of chronic infection has been advancing rapidly, with studies of multiple different pathogens revealing new mechanisms. Many of these advances are related to ever-improving understanding of the specific relationships between the immune response and the cell biology of both immune cells and the cells targeted by pathogens. The Keystone Symposia meeting on Cell Biology and Immunology of Persistent Infection aims to bring together investigators working on a range of different chronic infections, break down the significant barriers that exist between the relatively siloed communities studying different chronic infections, and provide an opportunity to develop generalizable rules for the occurrence and control of chronic infection.
