EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT

DATE: 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday, May 21

PLACE: Forum Hall, Palmer Commons, University of Michigan, 100 Washtenaw Ave., Ann Arbor

EVENT: “Defense Mechanisms in Life: From Bacteria to the Human Body,” the 14th University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute annual symposium. The event is free and open to the public. Seven leading researchers on immune response will discuss the latest developments in the field.

This year, the Mary Sue and Kenneth Coleman Life Sciences Lecture will be given by Ruslan Medzhitov, the David W. Wallace Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Medzhitov helped pioneer research into a group of pathogen-sensing proteins called Toll-like receptors. Since the discovery of their function in the late 1990s, these receptors have transformed our understanding of the body’s response to infection and become one of the hottest areas of biology.

“We didn’t realize how much would come out of it eventually, that it would become such a huge area of research,” Medzhitov has said of his initial breakthroughs in the field with the late Yale immunologist Charles Janeway Jr.

Since then, Medzhitov’s continuing research has shown the key role Toll-like receptors play in infection control, chronic inflammation and tumor development. He believes they may also play important roles in illnesses like coronary artery disease, Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

The full-day program will also include talks by Luciano Marraffini of Rockefeller University; Phillip Zamore of the University of Massachusetts Medical School; Yasmine Belkaid of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Gregory Sonnenberg of the Weill Cornell Medical College; Miriam Merad of the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and Marco Colonna of the Washington University School of Medicine.

Each year, the U-M Life Sciences Institute brings together top scientists from a range of disciplines to share work around a common theme. The event represents the LSI’s most important values: excellence in science, investment in high-impact research, and the spark that happens when researchers with varied expertise exchange ideas, methods and insights.

SPONSOR: U-M Life Sciences Institute

INFORMATION: myumi.ch/6QA0q

MEDIA: Reporters are welcome, but please RSVP to Ian Demsky, 734-647-9837, idemsky@umich.edu.