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Chandigarh 19th March:- A three-day Advanced Immunology course organized by the Molecular Immunology Group, Department of Immunopathology, PGI, Chandigarh from 17th to 19th March, under the leadership of Prof Sunil K Arora, concluded here today. This International event was held under the aegis of Federation of Immunological Societies of Asia-Oceania (FIMSA) to facilitate the scientific interactions between younger members of its societies with experienced faculty and promote the discipline of Immunology by providing organizational expertise on various aspects of Immunology. Immunology being a very important component of basic and clinical medicine, as it covers the main defense mechanisms of a body. By understanding the immune-mechanisms during a disease will lead to designing of newer molecules for better management of many diseases including infections, cancers and auto-immune disorders.
The Program included plenary lectures, tutorials and group-discussion sessions. Twenty-two stalwarts in the field of immunology from different parts of Asia-oceanic regions were invited as faculty of this course attended by more than 160 delegates from all parts of India and some from these countries also. Among faculty were Prof G P Talwar (of Talwar Research Foundation) who was the Founder-Director of world famous National Institute of Immunology in New Delhi, who deliberated on the protocols of developing a successful vaccine giving examples of two model vaccines that were developed in his laboratory. These were the Mw-based Leprosy vaccine and the Anti-fertility vaccine. The leprosy vaccine is the only vaccine against Mycobacterium lepraeinfection, which has been developed in the world and used to show very promising results with more than 60-70% decrease in incidence of new infections in highly endemic areas of world. The anti-fertility vaccine developed against the beta-subunit of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a hormone that is expressed by the fertilised egg and helps in implantation and successful pregnancy. Although this particular vaccine is not yet in the market but various clinical trials have shown that it may find a solution to control the exploding population in India and some other parts of the world. Other speakers discussed the topics from innate immune response to adaptive immune response and then clinical immunology. Innate responses are the first defence mechanisms in the body to evade the foreign infectious agents as well tumors from establishing in a normal healthy individual. This is very important to have a strong innate immune response in a body in order to generate a strong adaptive immune response which is a bit delayed but ultimately is able to take care of the infecting agents. However if the innate immune response fails the adaptive response never generates, which becomes very dangerous for the individual.
The course was accredited with '10 credit hours' by the Punjab medical Council, which helps the participants in future career development. The participants included basic scientists and clinicians mostly at the beginning of their careers. In the valedictory function while concluding the training course, Prof. Sunil Arora, course-director of this program, expressed his satisfaction as the main objective of the course was fulfilled as this was able to generate one-to-one interactions during various sessions among participants and faculty. Prof. Shigeo Koyasu, Executive-Director at RIKEN Centre for Integrative Biology at Wako Saitama, Japan and President of FIMSA, thanked Dr Arora for taking this initiative and conducting this academic program so successfully. He described the course as one of the best among all courses he had attended so far, both from academic point of view as well as social point of view. Six young scientists were awarded complete travel fellowship on the basis of the abstracts they submitted for presentation during the course program, while three poster presentation awards were also conferred on scientists whose presentations were adjudged as best among 40 research papers, which were presented as posters during the first two days of the course. The course ended with a thanks note from the course-director.
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