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First Round of Abstract Submission Ends: Sep 30, 2026
Extended Early Bird Ends: Jan 28, 2026

Plenary Speakers

Prof. Ake Lundkvist
Uppsala University, Sweden
Title: Tick-borne encephalitis: An emerging disease in Europe
Åke Lundkvist, PhD, is Professor in virology and one of the founders of the Zoonosis Science Center (ZSC) at Uppsala University, Sweden. Åke obtained his PhD with a thesis focusing on hantaviruses and became assistent professor in 1998, and adjuct professor in 2003, at Karolinska Institutet. He has today over 35 years of experience on Orthobunya, Flavi, and Avian influenza viruses and was the Head of Laboratory of the SMI/FoHM BSL3/BSL4 laboratories 2003-2013. His work focuses on basic virological, pathogenetic, ecological and epidemiological studies on zoonotic viruses and their vectors and hosts.
Prof. Luigi Buonaguro
National Cancer Institute - IRCCS “Pascale ”, Naples – Italy
Title: Molecular mimicry and cancer vaccine development
Dr. Luigi Buonaguro is the Director of the Innovative Immunological Models at the National Cancer Institute - IRCCS “Pascale ”, Naples – Italy. He is an expert in identification and characterization of tumor antigens for preventive/therapeutic cancer vaccine development. His focus is mostly on shared tumor-associated antigens for offthe-shelf vaccines. Based on this approach, he has coordinated an European Consortium for the development and clinical evaluation in a Phase I clinical trial of the HEPAVAC therapeutic cancer vaccine for primary hepatocellular carcinoma (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03203005). In parallel, he is pioneering the homology between tumor antigens (TAAs) and virus/bacteria-derived antigens (MoAs) (molecular mimicry). In particular, he is contributing to understand the role and crossreactive potency of the immune response elicited by MoAs as anti-tumor immunity in order to develop next-generation preventive/therapeutic cancer vaccines. According to Expertscape (https://www.expertscape.com), he is in 1st place in Italy, 10th in Europe and among the top 30 Scientists in the World for the item "Cancer VACCINE".
Prof. Angel Porgador
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
Title: Decoding Immune Checkpoints: Novel Targets, Splice Variants, Unique Targeting and the Glycan Dimension
Prof. Angel Porgador holds a Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science. His primary research focuses on innate and adaptive immunity in health and disease, particularly in tumor and viral immunology. He joined the Shraga Segal Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics in October 1998 after he did his postdoctoral fellowship at the Duke University Medical Center and at the National Institutes of Health in the USA.

Throughout the years, he has been involved in all levels of the Faculty of Health Sciences (FOHS); teaching, researching, and academic activities. Over the last years, he served as the FOHS Dean and as the BGU Deputy Vice-President & Dean for Research & Development. He served as the head of the BGU COVID-19 task force.

In the framework of his activities at FOHS and BGU he initiated the Research Excellence Initiative projects, which encourage collaborative synergistic multidisciplinary research projects and developed a system of optimizing the absorption of new researchers.

At the national level, he has served as president of the Israel Immunology Association, president of the Israeli Society for Cancer Research, and president of FISEB, a federation of the Israeli societies of experimental biology. At the international level, for the past nine years, he has been a member of the board of directors and a founding member of BGU at WIN, an organization that aims to promote interdisciplinary medical research and connect medical centers to pharma and biotechnology companies.
Prof. Jiri Mestecky
University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA
Title: Global impact of Epstein-Bar virus infection in autoimmune diseases, including immunoglobulin A nephropathy
Jiri Mestecky, M, PhD, is a professor of Microbiology and Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, U.S. A. He obtained his medical degree from Charles University in Prague and PhD from the Czech Academy of Sciences.
He has worked on the induction of humoral and cellular immune responses in mucosal and systemic compartments against bacterial and viral antigens and vaccines including influenza, Epstein-Barr, human or simian immunodeficiency viruses, and streptococci using mucosal or systemic vaccine route administration and various antigen delivery systems. Furthermore, his co-workers demonstrated in humans the induction of mucosal tolerance manifested by the systemic unresponsiveness of T cells in the presence of mucosal and systemic antibody responses. The most recent studies include the role of Epstein-Barr virus infection in the development of a common human autoimmune disease – IgA nephropathy – with marked age, socio-economic and racial differences in the disease incidence.
Prof. Khalid Shah
Harvard Medical School, USA
Title: Turning Discovery into Potential Cure: The Innovation Pathway for Cellular Therapies
Dr. Shah and his team have pioneered major developments in translational cell therapy field, successfully developing gene edited and engineered cellular therapies for cancer. Previously, Dr. Shah's translational work has caught the attention in the public domain and was highlighted in the media world-wide including features on BBC and CNN. Recently, Dr. Shah’s laboratory has repurposed cancer cells by reverse engineering and utilized them as therapeutics to treat cancer, which was highlighted world-wide including features on Scientific American, New York Times, Boston Herald and Sky News. Amongst Dr. Shah’s published works are also two books featuring groundbreaking insights into treating cancer using different engineered cell types. He has presented his findings in more than 300 seminars worldwide and in recent years has given various keynote lectures on Innovation and Clinical Translation of biological therapies.

The potential of developing novel cancer therapies by Dr. Shah and his team has been recognized by many cancer alliances and associations and has received the young investigator, mentorship, distinguished research, innovation, idea, and impact awards for his work. Dr. Shah holds current positions on numerous councils, advisory and editorial boards in the fields of Cell therapy and Oncology and has participated in the training of numerous undergraduate, graduate students and residents who have come from across the US and from more than 49 foreign countries. Dr. Shah currently holds numerous patents, and he has founded two biotech companies whose main objective is the clinical translation of therapeutic cells in cancer patients. A prolific innovator, published researcher and author, Dr. Shah is passionate to harness “out of the box” therapies and ultimately find a cure for cancer.