Infectious pathogens and tumors use many mechanisms to evade an immune response and survive in the organisms. Some of the same mechanisms are of relevance for the regulation of tolerance to self-antigens or its breakdown in autoimmunity. Their modulation may also result in successful graft take Infectious pathogens and tumors use many mechanisms to evade an immune response and survive in the organisms. Some of the same mechanisms are of relevance for the regulation of tolerance to self-antigens or its breakdown in autoimmunity. Their modulation may also result in successful graft take or rejection in organ transplantation. In the recent years there has been great progress in the understanding of many of these mechanisms that are very diverse but all result in the escape of the pathogen or tumor from an effective immune response with deleterious effect. Infectious disease immunity has been teaching us much about the mechanisms of immune evasion and what we have learned from these studies has greatly contributed to the understanding of cancer immune evasion and of the immunological mechanisms regulating autoimmunity and graft rejection. Because this meeting will be concurrent with a meeting on Microbial Latency (The Pathogen-Host Standoff: Persistent and Latent Infection), we have included only a limited number of presentations on immune evasion in infections (which is the major mechanism of microbial latency). The presentations on immunity to infections are limited to those fields (e.g. immunodeviation or oncogenic viruses) that provided important information for the understanding of the mechanisms of immune evasion. We have attempted to cover many aspects of immune evasion in cancer as well as to provide examples of the importance of similar mechanisms in autoimmunity, transplantation, and pregnancy. ? ?
