ABSTRACT
Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Innate Immune Receptors: Roles in
Immunology and Beyond, organized by Drs. Jenny P.Y. Ting, Shie-Liang Edmond Hsieh, Fu-Tong Liu, Michael
Gale, Jr. and Siamon Gordon. The conference will be held in Taipei, Taiwan from March 10-14, 2019.
Innate immune receptors include a plethora of membrane-associated proteins as well as intracellular receptors
that directly bind or sense the present of pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). The importance of
innate immune receptors was first appreciated in infectious diseases and autoinflammatory disorders, but it is
now clear that their roles extend beyond innate immunology. The crucial roles of these receptors in many
clinically relevant fields and their newly documented role in non-immune cells underscore their importance in
biologic processes and diseases. This conference will address the ligands and signaling mechanisms of a
diverse set of innate immune receptors as well as the profound impacts of innate immune receptors on the
microbiome, which in turn has impacts on multiple organ systems. We will discuss the intrinsic functions of innate
immune receptors within adaptive immune cells, non-immune cells such as epithelial and endothelial cells, and
their roles in cancer and stem cells. The pleitrophic effects of this important receptor class have far-reaching
consequences for critical biological processes such as cancer cell death and signaling, DNA damage, stress
response, stem cell proliferation/differentiation, vaccine adjuvanticity, age-related dementia, metabolic disorders
and microbiome balance. By the nature of the topic, this conference will bring together an interdisciplinary group
of investigators and thus will catalyze cross-fertilization of ideas which will stimulate important medical advances.