Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the organizing committee, I am pleased to announce the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Immunology (JSI). This event will be held at the Kobe International Conference Center, Kobe International Exhibition Hall and Kobe Portopia Hotel, Kobe, from December 5 to 7, 2012. From this year, the Annual JSI Meetings JSI will be held at either Makuhari or Kobe. Therefore, the contents of the meeting are even more important than before. We intend for this meeting to appeal to a broad range of people, including researchers at the forefront of immunology as well as students. This will be possible due to the excellent planning and management of former president, Prof. Tokuhisa, for the annual meeting held in Makuhari last year.

A part of the Nobel Prize in 2011 was awarded to the discovery of innate immunity. In recent years, rapid progress has been made in understanding interactions between innate and adaptive immunity and their regulatory systems. The frontier of immunology research is moving from functional studies in the molecular and cellular levels to comprehensive and spatiotemporal analysis in immune cells using imaging technologies and bioinformatics. Furthermore, efforts are being made to understand immune responses at the whole-body level. The importance of human immunology is emphasized more and more, and novel therapeutic approaches against infectious diseases, allergy and autoimmune diseases are needed. In view of the circumstances, international symposia in this meeting are intended to address issues in innate immunity and signaling, effector T cell functions and neuro-immune interactions, Imaging of immune responses, perpetuation and resolution of inflammation, the mucosal barrier, molecular mechanisms of autoimmune diseases and allergy, and translational research in immunology. We will also discuss a new approach: systems immunology. We will invite as many foreign speakers as possible to comply with the past recommendations for international symposia. Like last year’s symposium, review talks will be set up in concert with the symposia, where a chair of the symposia will make a review in Japanese beforehand to help explain the contents of the lecture. The symposia, containing also late breaking talks, will encompass a variety of hot topics.

The scientific program also includes a number of seminars in related fields, technical seminars and clinical seminars at lunchtime, to appeal to the diverse interests of participants. In addition programs designed to help understanding of cutting-edge research knowledge in both basic and clinical fields will be held. At workshops in the afternoon, recent data and views will be presented for each theme. You can seek collaboration or gain inspiration for the next step through question and answer sessions and discussions. At the end of workshops, after “1 minute presentations” by poster presenters, moving to the poster hall, participants can make lively discussions. In this manner, we aim at a meeting in which you can actively get involved. We strongly expect that this annual meeting will act as a forum to share ideas and insights, which can bring us new intellectual exchanges or collaborations that lead to advances in future research.

The “Call for papers” is scheduled to open on Tuesday, May 29. Not only JSI members but also nonmembers are welcome to submit abstracts. We require contributions from young researchers in order to further progress immunological studies in Japan. We hope you will enjoy the meeting in Kobe, where the successful 14th International Congress of Immunology was held two years ago. We sincerely look forward to your abstract submission.