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First Round of Abstract Submission Ends: Apr 15, 2026
Extended Early Bird Ends: Aug 28, 2025

Keynote Speakers

Prof. Moutih Rafei
University of Montreal, Canada
Title:

To be Confirmed

Expert in cellular and molecular immunology with major focus on cell-based therapies and therapeutics. Innovative scientist who can continuously propose and implement new research projects and foster external collaborations based on emerging human disease understanding. Ability to work comfortably under pressure while maintaining high energy level in a field that emphasizes speed, organizational skills, decisiveness, and effective interpersonal communications. Expertise in training laboratory personnel with consistent track record of surpassing standards and goals. Research Interests: - Cytokines engineering and biology - Autoimmune diseases and oncology - Cell therapy and immuno-therapeutics - Discovery of novel compounds for stimulating thymopoiesis - Ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem cells
Prof. Janusz Rak
McGill University, Canada
Title: Harnessing extracellular vesicle pathways to target vascular peculiarities and immune cell exclusion in glioblastoma
Janusz Rak, MD, PhD is a Professor of Pediatrics and Jack Cole Chair in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at McGill University and Investigator at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RIMUHC). His laboratory investigates how oncogenic events deregulate tumour microenvironment, orchestrate intercellular communications and trigger vascular alterations and systemic vascular paraneoplastic syndromes in cancer. The focal point of these studies are processes mediated by the exchange of extracellular vesicles (EVs), including exosomes carrying oncogenic, diagnostic and therapeutic cargo. He published over 220 research papers (43,000 citations, h-index 87). He currently directs the CFI funded program – Centre for Applied Nanomedicine (CAN) and the NET program sponsored by Fondation Charles Bruneau and CIBC to investigate EV-based liquid biopsy approaches in pediatric cancer. He also leads projects supported by Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Cancer Research Society and other sources. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Prof. Laurent Peyrin-Biroulet
Lorraine University, France
Title: Will Update
Laurent Peyrin-Biroulet is a Professor of Gastroenterology at Nancy University Hospital and an internationally recognized expert in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). He founded in 2023 the IHU INFINY, an institute dedicated to the prevention and cure of IBD, thanks to a national grant awarded by the French President, Emmanuel Macron. Between 2015 and 2023, he was the President of the Groupe d'Etude Thérapeutique des Affections Inflammatoires du Tube Digestif (GETAID), a unique national network of French IBD centers running innovative clinical trials that is internationally recognized for conducting high-quality research. Between 2020 and 2023, he was the President of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organization (ECCO) and Scientific Secretary of the International Organization for the Study of IBD (IOIBD), the two leading international organizations in IBD. He is currently the principal investigator of several dozen ongoing local, national and international academic and industry clinical trials. He has raised nearly 35 million euros in funding over the past few years. He is the President of the ICARE project, a European prospective cohort that has enrolled 10,000 IBD patients between 2016 and 2019 and that is assessing for the first time the real risk-benefit profile of current therapeutic strategies. He has initiated and has been responsible for numerous international projects (STRIDE initiative, defining early Crohn’s disease, etc.). Thanks to his position in international organizations, he has developed several international indexes such as the IOIBD disease severity index and the WHO disability index for IBD. He has published more than 1,100 articles referenced in PubMed. His current H-index is of 116 and he is the top-rated expert in Crohn’s disease in the world according to “Expertscape”. He was ranked No. 1 in the top 14 authors of relevant literature of IBD diagnosis in nearly 10 years (Liu C, et al. Front Immunol. 2022). He was also ranked No. 1 in the top 10 most productive authors in Crohn’s disease treatment research between 2004 and 2023 (Xu L, et al. Front Pharmacol. 2024). Moreover, since 2019 he is ranked by Clarivate among the “highly cited researchers”.
Dr. Li Yang
National Cancer Institute, NIH, USA
Title: Will Update
Dr. Yang’s research program focuses on the mechanisms underlying tumor-host interplay in cancer metastatic progression. Dr. Yang has made seminal contributions to the identification of the immune and inflammatory mediators in the anti- and pro-tumor functional switch of TGF-β, mechanisms of myeloid cell recruitment in the tumor microenvironment, as well as myeloid TGF-β signaling in cancer immune surveillance and in inflammatory stroke.
Prof. Luigi Buonaguro
Istituto Nazionale Tumori "Fondazione Pascale", Italy
Title: Will Update
Will Update
Prof. David C. Wraith
University of Birmingham, UK
Title: Antigen-specific immunotherapy of autoimmune diseases
David Wraith is a research immunologist who began his career at NIMR, London in 1981 working on the immune response to viruses. In 1986, he received MRC funding to work at Stanford University where he developed a lifelong interest in autoimmune diseases. This led to him establishing a Wellcome Trust funded research laboratory in Cambridge. In 1995, he took up the Chair in Experimental Pathology at Bristol and between 2016 and 2023 was Director of the Institute of Immunology and Immunotherapy in Birmingham. David has over 200 publications with >21,000 citations. His group recently defined the cellular and molecular basis of antigen-specific immunotherapy leading to definition of the genetic and epigenetic control of the approach.

His group successfully completed phase 2 clinical trials of peptide immunotherapy in Multiple Sclerosis and phase 1 trials in Graves’ hyperthyroid disease. Antigen-specific immunotherapy with peptides has the potential to treat many serious autoimmune and allergic diseases for which there is no effective treatment: currently >1/5 children will suffer from an allergy or autoimmune condition during their lifetime. This approach is designed to improve the safety and efficacy of immunotherapy by specifically targeting the cells involved in the disease.
Prof. Eyad Elkord
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China
Title: T regulatory cells and immune checkpoints in cancer: Findings, challenges, and opportunities
Prof. Eyad Elkord holds a professorship in the Department of Biosciences and Bioinformatics and serves as the Director of the Suzhou Municipal Key Laboratory of Biomedical Sciences and Translational Immunology at the School of Science, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China. He is also an honorary professor at the University of Salford, United Kingdom.
Prof. Elkord is as internationally recognized scientist for his pioneering work in immune regulation, and has edited several books for prominent journals. With more than 145 publications in high-impact international journals and over 14,000 citations, his research is highly influential, reflected in an h-index of 49 and an M-index of 2.7. He has been named to Stanford University’s global lists of top 2% scientists for five consecutive years (2019–2023), ranking in the top 0.26% in the Immunology subfield. Additionally, he was recognized by Elsevier among the Most Highly Cited Chinese Researchers of 2024.