Conference: 2017 Keystone Symposia-Integrating Metabolism and Immunity, May 29-June 2, 2017 Dublin, Ireland.
Conference Highlight: The 2017 Integrating Metabolism and Immunity Keystone Symposia focused on the coordination of metabolic programs and immune cell functions as fundamental events in inflammation.
Conference Article: This Keystone Symposia meeting focused on how immune functions are controlled by specific metabolic pathways and nutrient availability. During this symposia the latest discoveries in immunometabolism and how they can be exploited to design new therapeutics targeting inflammatory and metabolic disorders were discussed.
An integral component of immune regulation is through the metabolic pathways necessary to support energetically demanding protective or pathogenic responses. Understanding these links is critical to understanding basic immune function. Activation, differentiation and function of macrophages, B cells, and T cells are all linked to pathways that regulate cellular metabolism. Likewise, systemic metabolism and metabolic diseases are influenced by immunity. For example, metabolic syndrome in obesity is mediated in part by pathogenic immune cells, similar to inflammatory and autoimmune disease states.
The focus of this meeting was on factors that influence immune cell metabolism and impact a variety of inflammatory disorders. Dr. Diane Mathis, professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology at Harvard Medical School, presented her work in the field of T cell differentiation, with focus on the maturation, selection, and responses of T regulatory T cells in the adipose tissue during obesity. Dr. Mark Febbraio, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Australia, focused on how macrophages use toll-like receptors to recognize long-chain fatty acids, leading to inflammation during nutrient overload. Dr. Richard Flavell, from the Department of Immunobiology at Yale University, presented a novel approach to use gene-editing to study the function of effector T cells in metabolic disease. Together, these discoveries emphasized the critical link between metabolism and immunity and highlighted the role of aberrant immune cell metabolism in inflammatory responses and metabolic disorders associated with obesity.