The Clinical Immunology Society (CIS) has undertaken the task of arranging a federated meeting for clinical immunology to be held yearly commencing in May 2001. This new meeting plans to provide an opportunity for members of each of the individual clinical immunology societies involved to meet together on a yearly basis. The first Federated meeting will be held in Boston, May 4-7, 2001. We believe that this new meeting will consolidate the field of Clinical Immunology as it reaches maturity, particularly as it relates to the major human autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and juvenile diabetes. Resultant cross-fertilization from this meeting among the disease-centric investigators and members of the biotech and pharmaceutical community is of critical importance with the increasing numbers of therapeutics for treatment of these autoimmune diseases. This meeting reflects the new interdisciplinary nature now necessary for the investigation and treatment of human autoimmune diseases. It will also cover additional immune based diseases including, but not limited to, asthma, immuno-oncology, acquired immunodeficiency, primary immunodeficiency, transplantation tolerance and immuno-dermatology. Another key aspect will be the inclusion of the Immune Tolerance Network annual meeting. This will provide an important opportunity to inform industry about the Immune Tolerance Network and to disseminate new information about science and medicine. The format will be three days on topics of mutual interest to all constituent groups. There will be two major plenary lectures to begin each day, followed by concurrent major symposia on topics of interest to constituent groups. Afternoons will be abstract-driven interspersed with breakout meetings for the constituent societies and presentations by biotech and pharmaceutical firms concerning technologies of interest to the assembled groups. There will be two additional meetings held in conjunction with this meeting. The first of these is a """"""""fellows day"""""""" in which plenary and abstract driven talks will be held on the day preceding the main scientific sessions. The second parallel session will be on """"""""science for the non-clinician"""""""" which targets the lay societies representing the constituent scientific societies.
