The purpose of our immune system is similar to that of The Great Wall

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The Great Wall is one of the most famous icons in China. The original purpose of building it was to protect China against the raids and invasions of the various nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe. In the human body, our immune system is similar to the Great Wall in order to protect human beings against various diseases.

Immunology is an important subject that studies all aspects of the immune system and has direct relations to human health and diseases. The subject has been growing very fast in China over the past five years.

The field of immunology

The number of publications in the research area of immunology indexed in web of science contributed by Chinese scientists grew from 1771 in 2010 to 3199 in 2014 and now China is stood at the second place in term of the number of scientific publications in immunology in 2014.

The compound annual growth rate of Chinese publications in immunology from 2010 to 2014 is 16% and under the open access model during the same period, the growth is 43%. This indicates that more and more Chinese immunologists prefer to publish their research in open access journals.

The compound annual growth rate of Chinese publications in immunology from 2010 to 2014 is 16% and under the open access model during the same period, the growth is 43%.

In the early winter this year, the 10^th Annual Meeting of Chinese Society for Immunology was held in Beijing and many top Chinese and international immunologists gathered together to discuss their latest findings and the future trend of immunology.

As the old friend of Chinese Society for Immunology, BioMed Central held a booth at this conference and had discussions with many attendees. In the three days of the conference, eight big themes were intensively discussed, including; the differentiation and development of immune cells, the identification and regulation of innate immune responses, immunodeficiency diseases and allergic diseases, mechanisms of immune regulation and tolerance, transplantation immunity, infection immunity, autoimmune diseases, tumor immunity and tumor immunotherapy.

Research highlights discussed at the conference

Professor Xuetao Cao, the President of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences presented his recent study on the regulatory mode of innate immunity and inflammation. Professor Cao said that the structural and functional study of pattern recognition receptor (PRR) was the hot topic in the past ten years, which generated many important research progresses.

Recently, the mechanistic study from an epigenetic angle of PPR regulation mode is receiving more and more attention and Professor Cao’s team has made some significant discoveries in this field.

He found that the decisive factor in the regression of inflammation is the epigenetic regulation rather than the negative regulation of signal transduction. This research has profound significance in the treatment of autoimmune and inflammation related diseases.

Professor Zhigang Tian, the President of Chinese Society for Immunology gave a talk entitled “Blockade of inhibitory receptor TIGIT prevents anti-tumor NK cell exhaustion”.

Professor Zhigang Tian, the President of Chinese Society for Immunology gave a talk entitled “Blockade of inhibitory receptor TIGIT prevents anti-tumor NK cell exhaustion”. His talk revealed that T-cell Ig and ITIM domain (TIGIT), a co-inhibitory receptor expressed on T cells and NK cells, was up-regulated during tumor progression.

His team discovered that the growth and metastasis of pre-established B16/F10 tumor in mice could be suppressed by blocking TIGIT signaling in vivo via monoclonal antibodies in combination with Flt3L overexpression in vivo by gene delivery.

This method was also found effective to inhibit colon cancer, breast cancer and the MCA-induced fibrosarcoma growth in vivo. These findings demonstrated that TIGIT contributes to tumor-induced immune exhaustion and might be a promising target for cancer immunotherapy.

Professor Yuzhang Wu, the Director of Institute of immunology, PLA talked about how the TCF-1 transcription factor initiated the differentiation of follicular helper T cells (T_FH cells) during acute viral infection.

His team found that TCF-1 played a key role in both initiating the differentiation of T_FH and developing the effector function of the differentiated T_FH cells during acute viral infection, as well as disclosed the mechanism of such process.

Professor Wu finally summarized that TCF-1 was an important hub in the upstream of the Bcl-6-Blimp 1 axis and can initiate and secure the differentiation of T_FH cells in acute viral infections.

Open Access immunology

After the presentation, Professor Wu shared his experience and vision in open access publishing. He said that open access would be the main trend and a sustainable model for scientific publishing in the future.

Many amazing scientific findings in immunology were discussed in the community of immunology, which we believe would advance the progress of this field and might have huge potentials to improve the health conditions of human society.

During the three days, many amazing scientific findings in immunology were discussed in the community of immunology, which we believe would advance the progress of this field and might have huge potentials to improve the health conditions of human society, such as generating solutions to nowadays incurable diseases.

BioMed Central, as the first open access publisher, holds a strong portfolio of immunology journals, such as Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology, BMC Immunology, Journal of Inflammation, Journal of Neuroinflammation, AIDS Research and Therapy and Immunity & Ageing.

Many attendees of this conference came to our booth and talked with us about their stories in publishing their research in our journals and provided their valuable suggestions to our publishing services.

Here we like to thank all of them. We want to say that our only aim is to provide the best services to our authors in publishing their latest scientific findings, as well as to provide our readers the best experiences in reading scientific articles through our PC and mobile platforms.