Dr. R.E. Bontrop is the General and Scientific Director of the Dutch Biomedical Primate Research Centre (BPRC) and holds a position as a Professor at the University of Utrecht. His research focuses on the co-evolution of pathogens and immune response genes in primates. His department has played a key role in the discovery and characterization of the MHC’s, KIR’s and other complex immune regions of various nonhuman primate species such as chimpanzees, rhesus and cynomolgous macaques, and common marmosets. He has published more than 250 PubMed-indexed papers.

I have been involved in the study of MHC-I, MHC-II and CD1 molecules, their assembly, peptide or lipid association, and subsequent T cell stimulation for many years. We essentially defined the peptide loading complex (PLC), which consists of the peptide transporter TAP and two associated tapasin-ERp57 disulfide-linked heterodimers, which associate with MHC-I molecules via a direct tapasin interaction. MHC-I association with the PLC is further stabilized by interactions between ERp57 and calreticulin and between calreticulin and an MHC-I N-linked glycan. We discovered and named tapasin and showed that it functions as a peptide editor to maximize the affinity of MHC-I-associated peptides. We have investigated the mechanisms of cross-presentation, a phenomenon in which peptides derived from antigens internalized by dendritic cells are presented to CD8+ T cells by MHC-I molecules. I am also interested in the functions of interferon-inducible genes (ISGs) in innate immunity. This began with our identification of gamma-interferon-inducible lysosomal thiolreductase (GILT), a critical enzyme in the endocytic pathway that reduces the disulfide bonds in internalized proteins to facilitate the generation of peptides that bind MHC-II molecules and to MHC-I-restricted during cross-presentation. We and others recently showed that SARS-CoV2 encodes immunoevasins that affect the surface expression of HLA class I molecules in human cells. Recognition that SARS-CoV2 primarily infects bat cells led us to investigate the effects of the SARS-CoV2 immunoevasins on bat MHC-I function. These data in turn have led us to examine the MHC-I antigen processing pathway in bats.

Martin Flajnik is a Professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Medicine. He graduated from the Pennsylvania State University in 1978 with a BS in Biology. He earned an MS in 1979 and a PhD in 1983 from the University of Rochester (NY) in Microbiology and Immunology. He was a postdoc (and completed his PhD) from1983-1988 at the Basel Institute for Immunology under Louis Du Pasquier and rose to professor in his first independent academic position at the University of Miami (FL) (1988-97). He has been a professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Medicine since 1998. Flajnik’s work is centered on the evolution of the adaptive immune system, with the major goal being to understand the origins of adaptive immunity. He was involved in the early biochemical and molecular characterization of lower vertebrate MHC and identified several immunoglobulin and T cell receptor isotypes in ectothermic vertebrates. He co-discovered single-domain antibodies in vertebrates and was involved in the first crystal structure of a non-mammalian immunoglobulin. He recently has become interested in the emergence and evolution of lymphoid tissues. Flajnik has been a co-editor for Immunogenetics since 2001 and has won teaching awards at the Universities of Miami and Maryland.

Gunilla is Professor at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. Her group studies T and B cell receptor repertoires with a specific interest in how polymorphisms in the germline V, D and J genes that encode these receptors influence our responses to infections and vaccines or predispose to autoimmune diseases. In addition to genetic and functional studies of human immune responses, her group has developed methods, tools, and genetic databases to study immune responses in rhesus macaques that are widely used by the vaccine community. Professor Karlsson Hedestam received her BSc from Uppsala University in 1990 and a PhD from University of Oxford in 1993. During 1994-1998, she was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School in Boston. She became an Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet in 2004 and a tenured Professor in 2012. She holds a Distinguished Professor grant from the Swedish Research Council, grants from the NIH and the EU H2020 program, as well as an ERC Advanced grant. She is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Assembly. During 2023 and 2024, she is the chair of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine.

Jim Kaufman has been working on various aspects of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) for almost 50 years, much of that time trying to understand the evolution of the MHC by studying animals other than humans and mice, particularly chickens. He has worked at Harvard University as a PhD student, the Basel Institute for Immunology as his first independent position, the Institute for Animal Health as the head of the Division of Immunology, the University of Cambridge as the Professor of Comparative Immunogenetics, and now the University of Edinburgh as Chair of Immunology. He and his group continue to work from genes, genetics and genomics to biochemistry and cell biology, cellular immunology, infection studies and now to population genetics, all to understand the structure, function and evolution of immunity. Most recently, people in the group have been studying chickens but also passerine birds, Tasmanian devils, rabbits and bats, along with work on T cell receptors, on natural killer receptors and ligands, and on a low-tech high-throughput experimental approach to determining T cell epitopes. Jim Kaufman has been working on various aspects of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) for almost 50 years, much of that time trying to understand the evolution of the MHC by studying animals other than humans and mice, particularly chickens. He has worked at Harvard University as a PhD student, the Basel Institute for Immunology as his first independent position, the Institute for Animal Health as the head of the Division of Immunology, the University of Cambridge as the Professor of Comparative Immunogenetics, and now the University of Edinburgh as Chair of Immunology. He and his group continue to work from genes, genetics and genomics to biochemistry and cell biology, cellular immunology, infection studies and now to population genetics, all to understand the structure, function and evolution of immunity. Most recently, people in the group have been studying chickens but also passerine birds, Tasmanian devils, rabbits and bats, along with work on T cell receptors, on natural killer receptors and ligands, and on a low-tech high-throughput experimental approach to determining T cell epitopes.

Frits Koning is a staff member in the department of Immunology of the Leiden University Medical Centre since 1993. He was the CEO of the Dutch Celiac Disease Consortium (CDC) in which immunologists, geneticists, food specialists and medical doctors collaborated with industrial partners to improve the quality of life of patients with celiac disease. He is well recognized for his contributions to the field of immune mediated disorders, celiac disease in particular. Through his work it is now well established which gluten fragments are disease causative and how they are recognized by disease-related T cells, providing a molecular basis for the genetic association between HLA-DQ and celiac disease. In his most recent work he uses high dimensional flow and mass cytometry to unravel the involvement of the innate and adaptive immune system in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

Tony De Tomaso is a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His group studies an allorecognition system found in a basal chordate species called Botryllus schlosseri. Botryllus is a tunicate: invertebrate chordates that span the transition between invertebrates and vertebrates. Allorecognition is controlled by a single, highly polymorphic locus called the fuhc, and there are ca. 1000 alleles of this locus worldwide. However, Botryllus does not have RAG or AID, thus uses innate, germline encoded receptors to discriminate between fuhc alleles. Tony’s group is focused on understanding how an innate recognition system can have a discriminatory ability more reminiscent of adaptive immunity than that of mammalian innate allorecognition systems, such as KIR-based discrimination of MHC Class I. Tony received his BSc from Stanford University in 1987 and his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in 1994. Following completion of his PhD, Dr. De Tomaso was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Irv Weissman at Stanford University. Tony has been at UC Santa Barbara since 2009, and became a full Professor in 2017.

Lutz Walter heads the Primate Genetics Lab at the German Primate Center and is Professor of Immunology and Immunogenetics at the Medical Faculty of the Georg-August University Göttingen. The group is studying the biology of NK lymphocytes and the genomics of primates. His focus is on studies of the interaction of NK cell receptors and their MHC class I ligands, the role of genetic variability in the effector function of NK cells as well as the evolution of NK cell receptor and MHC genes. Lutz studied biology at the Georg-August University in Göttingen from 1985-1992. After his PostDoc time from 1992 to 1999, he became group leader in the Immunogenetics Department at the University of Göttingen. In 2004, Lutz was appointed head of the Primate Genetics Lab and in 2009 received a professorship for Immunology and Immunogenetics at the Medical Faculty of the University of Göttingen.

I am an evolutionary ecologist interested in the immune system of wild animals, particularly the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) genes in birds of the order Passeriformes. I analyze MHC genes on both micro- and macro-evolutionary scales, hence within and between species. At present me and my collaborators investigate the relative expression of different MHC genes and characterize the MHC genomic region in fine detail. One aim of my work is to understand why songbirds have so many MHC genes in their genome. I got my PhD in 2004 at Lund University, Sweden, did a PostDoc at University of Sheffield, UK, whereafter I went back to Lund University and the Molecular Ecology and Evolution Lab, Department of Biology where I am a Professor in Animal Ecology.