Keypoint Newsletter: December 2021

Welcome to the Keypoint Newsletter, bringing you all the latest news & views from Keystone Symposia! 

Featuring conference season highlights, spotlights on innovation and more, this biannual publication showcases Keystone Symposia’s efforts– past, present & future– to catalyze collaborative partnerships and inspire innovation in science and medicine around the world.

Looking Back on 50 Years of Keystone Symposia: Evolution of Scientific Programming

By Ralph A. Bradshaw

What is now the Keystone Symposia on Molecular and Cellular Biology, which boasts an international conference portfolio of 50-60 meetings per year on topics ranging from structural biology to global health, started 50 years ago as a single meeting held at the Squaw Valley Olympic Village in March 1972… READ MORE

Check out our 50th Anniversary Website for more on Keystone Symposia’s history and upcoming plans for commemorating this landmark year during the 2022 meeting season!

Nature Publishing Features Vishva Dixit on Fifty Forward Campaign

To highlight our 50th anniversary and first-ever capital campaign, we commissioned an advertorial piece with Nature Portfolio to raise awareness for this landmark event. The advertorial featuring Dr. Vishva Dixit will be published in print this December, and is already live online:

Scientific Conferences to Fuel New Ideas and the Next Generation of Scientists

A conversation with Vishva Dixit, Vice President of Discovery Research at Genentech and board member of Keystone Symposia.

"To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Keystone Symposia is launching the Fifty Forward campaign to advance new ideas and support diverse, early-career researchers in the life sciences. Vishva Dixit, Vice President of Discovery Research at Genentech and board member of Keystone Symposia, explains the value of these conferences and the goals of the new campaign..."  ... READ MORE

Introducing the Fellows Class of 2022

By Heather Gerhart

Keystone Symposia is pleased to announce and introduce our nine 2022 Keystone Symposia Fellows!  These early-career scientists rose to the top among an extremely talented pool of applicants, by demonstrating the drive, intellect, and tenacity to become leaders in the biomedical science community.... READ MORE

Organizer Insights on COVID-19, Vaccination & Pregnancy with Dr. Sabra Klein

By Alison Gilchrist

Although we still don’t understand many of the factors that dictate individual responses to vaccination, the pandemic has brought to light the impact of biological sex and pregnancy on vaccine efficacy and adverse side effects. The eSymposia on Maternal-Fetal Newborn Immunity, held on October 28 & 29, explored this emerging area of research as it relates to COVID-19, and other pathogens. Here we catch up with meeting co-organizer Dr. Sabra Klein about her work on this crucial topic and her vision for the meeting... READ MORE

Native American Heritage Month Spotlight

By Heather Gerhart

In honor of Native American Heritage month during November, we caught up with Keystone Symposia Fellow Dr. David Wilson, Director of the Tribal Health Research Office at the NIH. Dr. Wilson shares the importance of his work in combating health disparities in Native American communities and reflects on how his experiences in the fellows program have shaped his career... READ MORE

Brain Therapeutics: Lessons Learned from Pandemic Times ePanel

By Alison Gilchrist

Our battle with COVID-19 is far from over, but we’ve already learned some important lessons from the pandemic about the ways that science, scientific communication, and scientific collaboration can change for the better as a result of this global catastrophe. On Thursday, September 9^th, we convened a panel of experts to talk about how lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic can be applied to accelerate clinical success in the realm of Brain Therapeutics. The panel discussed how quickly groups from all over the world collaborated to study and develop the COVID-19 vaccines at unprecedented speed, and how to apply these lessons to their own field.... READ MORE

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Community News

Congratulations to our Keystone Symposia board members, Dr. Dale Abel, Dr. Juleen Zierath, Dr. Geoff Ginsburg and Dr. Vishva Dixit, who continue to achieve new heights in their careers.  Their display of leadership and visionary insight have earned them the follow accolades and promotions this year.... READ MORE

Upcoming Conferences

2022 marks the return to in-person conferences and we couldn't be more excited to welcome you to our upcoming events this season! For those who cannot attend in person, we will be offering hybrid and On Demand options for the majority of events, so everyone can access the latest scientific advances and breakthroughs. (See more on hybrid meeting formats from the September 2021 Keypoint Newsletter)

This season we will be exploring emerging topics from immunometabolism and micropeptides to innate immune memory and joint meetings on gut-brain axis and neuronal control of appetite, among many other new frontiers in biomedicine.

In addition, we have a strong line-up of conferences in the virology and immunology arenas, to examine the latest studies around COVID-19 biology and epidemiology as the pandemic continues to evolve. Don't miss our exciting joint meetings on Respiratory Viruses and Viral Immunity in January here in Keystone, and mark your calendars for April's meeting on Lessons from the Pandemic: Responding to Zoonotic Viral Diseases!

See the full 2022 season line-up here!