The Biomedical Research Council of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) of Singapore and RIKEN co-organized ‘Joint Symposium 07’, held on May 16 and 17 at Biopolis in Singapore. Biopolis is a biomedical research hub currently consisting of seven existing buildings, with two new ones, Immunos and Neuros, set to open soon as immunology and neurobiology research centers. Participating groups from A*STAR were the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB), and the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), and from RIKEN the Research Center for Allergy and Immunology (RCAI) and the Center for Developmental Biology (CDB). Immunology was the focus of the first day of the meeting and the second day concentrated on developmental biology. These seemingly disparate scientific disciplines have much in common. Studies of blood-cell and lymphocyte development have been very informative models for our understanding of other developmental systems. Moreover, similar genetic programs, for example the involvement of hierarchies of transcription factors, regulate the development of immune cells as well as other cell types.
The symposium, organized by Kong Peng Lam and Mike Jones of A*STAR and Shin-Ichi Nishikawa and Takashi Saito of RIKEN, was broad in scope with 20 speakers from fields such as cell signaling, tumor immunology, lymphoid organogenesis, humanized mice, myogenesis, embryogenesis, and evolution. Nishikawa (CDB) described a new model of Peyer’s patch (PP) organogenesis, which involves chemokine receptor-mediated sequential relocation of the cells that induce PP. The result is an influx and segregation of the various cellular constituents that make up the mature PP. Along a similar vein, Takeshi Watanabe (RCAI) described the generation of artificial lymph nodes (LN) that recapitulate conventional LN development but with intriguing differences, including a predominance of memory cells. He showed that these structures could be primed to suppress tumor-cell growth and ultimately hopes to extend these studies to humans. Jean Pierre Abastado (SIgN) has studied a spontaneous mouse-tumor model and found that tumor cells can attract and polarize immune cells, particularly macrophages, so that they support tumor-cell growth and inhibit immunity-mediated tumor rejection. Interference in this complex ecology may have therapeutic benefits. Phil Ingham (IMCB) is studying myogenesis in zebrafish and has made an EST (expressed sequence tag) library, the largest yet generated from this model organism. He has isolated several genes required for normal muscle development, and the library is publicly available to other zebrafish researchers, providing an important resource.
The goal of this Symposium was to allow senior and junior investigators from both countries to present data in areas of common interest in order to initiate and foster long-term collaborations. The participants all agreed that this was a very good beginning.
