Scientific Program

Relaxing Lecture

Timothy Caulfield, LLM, FRSC, FCAHS
Canada Research Chair in Health Law & Policy
Professor, Faculty of Law and School of Public Health
Research Director, Health Law Institute, University of Alberta

Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health, and Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. His interdisciplinary research on topics like stem cells, genetics, research ethics, the public representations of science, and public health policy has allowed him to publish over 350 academic articles. He has won numerous academic, science communication, and writing awards, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He contributes frequently to the popular press and is the author of two national bestsellers: The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (Penguin 2012) and Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash (Penguin 2015). His most recent book is Relax, Dammit!: A User’s Guide to the Age of Anxiety (Penguin Random House, 2020) (US Title: Your Day, Your Way). Caulfield is also the co-founder of the science engagement initiative #ScienceUpFirst and the host and co-producer of the award-winning documentary TV show, A User’s Guide to Cheating Death, which has been shown in over 60 countries, including streaming on Netflix in North America. 

Keynote Lecture

Donald W. MacGlashan, Jr., MD, PhD
Director of the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Johns Hopkins University

Dr. Donald MacGlashan's educational training began with dual degrees in Chemistry and Biology at California Institute of Technology followed by an MD and PhD at Johns Hopkins University. His background in chemistry resulted in an interest in biophysics. With this background he was studying molecular assembly –self-aggregation—and this led him to studies of antibody-antigen aggregation reactions as applied to stimulation of mast cells and basophils. Dr. Lawrence Lichtenstein was his mentor for both his Ph.D. and post-doctoral training at Johns Hopkins where he developed a research program to study IgE-mediated activation of basophils and mast cells.

What began as an interest in aggregation reactions quickly led to studies of signaling in these cells with a specific interest in how the cells turn themselves off after stimulation. In the early years, he developed methods to purify human basophils and mast cells in order to study signaling. These methods have mutated over the decades but still provide the means to study these rare cells. Along the way, his research has focused on different aspects of the biology of these cells. Early studies identified the released mediator profiles and these efforts led to the first studies to identify leukotriene release from mast cells and basophils followed by being first to demonstrate IL-4 secretion from basophils but not mast cells.  In projects to find ways to blunt the activation of these cells he joined the development team at Tanox (and later Genentech) that produced the first therapeutic anti-IgE antibodies that eventually led to FDA approval of omalizumab. Because we had first shown that IgE up-regulated expression FceRI, in the context of a therapeutic reagent like omalizumab we could determine that it was this property of the IgE-FceRI system that allowed omalizumab to be therapeutically efficacious. With a larger team at Hopkins, we developed projects that used omalizumab to explore the underlying biology of the human allergic response. Running in parallel with these projects was an evolving project to define signal transduction in these cells and combined with the omalizumab projects, we identified an unexpected modulation of SYK expression that is unique to human basophils during treatment with omalizumab. We also discovered the mechanisms of tachyphylaxis/desensitization in basophils and mast cells that are unique from animal models of these cells, and which offer a possible therapeutic approach to turning off these cells. 

Carl Prausnitz Lecture - Insights into Atopic Dermatitis

Raif Geha, MD
Medical School and the Chief of the Division of Immunology, Allergy, Rheumatology and
Dermatology Division at Boston Children’s Hospital 

Dr. Geha received his M.D. degree in 1969 from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon, and trained in Pediatrics and Immunology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Geha’s research interests are in molecular and cellular mechanisms of primary immunodeficiencies and atopic dermatitis/food allergy. He has contributed to more than 475 original articles, 150 reviews, several monographs and a book. His publications have appeared in Cell, Immunity, Nature, Nature Genetics, Molecular Cell, PNAS, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Journal of Immunology, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Science Immunology. Information about Dr. Geha’s current research can be found on https://www.gehalab.org.

Dr. Geha has received the E. Mead Johnson Award for Pediatric Research, considered the highest award for pediatric research, the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences Prize, and the American Association of Immunologists Prize in Human Immunology Research. He has served on a number of NIH study sections and on the NIAID council, has been a director of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology, was elected to the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians, has presided over the Clinical Immunology Society and chaired the WHO/IUIS Committee on Immunodeficiency. Dr. Geha has trained more than 150 postdoctoral fellows, many of whom are leaders in the fields of Allergy and Immunology.

Paul Kallos Memorial Lecture

Susan Lynch PhD
Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics,
Director Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine,
Associate Director Microbiome in IBD Program,
University of California San Francisco

Dr. Lynch received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in Microbiology from University College Dublin, Ireland, before performing her postdoctoral research as a Dean’s Fellow in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University in the laboratory of Dr. A.C. Matin. She is currently a Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco, where she also serves as Director of the Benioff Center for Microbiome Medicine. Dr. Lynch’s research program focuses primarily on the gut and airway microbiome and their role in the developmental origins and maintenance of chronic inflammatory disease, with a specific focus on allergy and asthma. Her integrative research program examines microbiome functional relationships with chronic inflammatory outcomes to inform cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying these relationships. Her translational research program develops novel microbiome-based interventions to engineer microbiome colonization and productivity to regulate immune tone. She has served on the National Academy of Science and Engineering committee on Advancing Understanding of the Implications of Environmental-Chemical Interactions with the Human Microbiome, and as an American Society of Microbiology, Distinguished Lecturer (2017-2019). She delivered the Rebecca Buckley Lectureship at the AAAAI in 2015 and was named one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s "Global Thinkers" in 2016. She sits on the board of directors of Siolta Therapeutics, a company she co-founded in 2017, that is currently testing a first-in-human neonatal gut microbiome reengineering strategy for the prevention of childhood atopy and asthma.

Presidential Lecture - The Long and Winding Road to Siglec-based Therapeutic Strategies

Bruce Bochner, MD
Samuel M. Feinberg Professor Medicine
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Division of Allergy and Immunology

Bruce S. Bochner, MD attended medical school and Internal Medicine residency training at the University of Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago, followed by postdoctoral allergy and immunology training at Johns Hopkins in the Division of Allergy and Clinical Immunology of the Department of Medicine, where he joined the faculty in 1988, was promoted to professor in 1999 and subsequently served as Division Director from 2003 to 2013 before accepting the professorship at Northwestern. His primary clinical and NIH-funded research interests center on the function and regulation of eosinophils and mast cells. He is involved in improving treatments of these diseases through inhibiting the function of these cells and in this regard cofounded the company, Allakos, Inc. that is actively pursuing such antibody-based therapies.  Dr. Bochner has supervised over 40 MD, PhD/MD, and PhD postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. He has served on NIH study sections, on several editorial boards including the JACI, as Editor-in-Chief for Allergy and Immunology for UpToDate, as a Director of the American Board of Allergy and Immunology, and on the Board of AAAAI.  He is an author on over 300 manuscripts with an H-index of 85.  Honors include multiple teaching awards, election to ASCI and AAP, recipient of the 2019 Mentorship Award from the AAAAI and serving in leadership roles for the International Eosinophil Society and the Collegium Internationale Allergologicum.

Oral Abstract Sessions
Highly scored abstracts will be placed in Oral Abstract Sessions and will take place at the InterContinental Montréal.

Poster Sessions
Poster Sessions will take place during the meeting, at the InterContinental Montréal. An assortment of light foods and other refreshments will be served. Poster presenters will stand next to their posters during assigned sessions and be available for questions and discussion.

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