Lawrence Steinman to speak at Cytokines conference Jan 30-31 2012 -San Diego, CA

Nov. 22, 2011 - PRLog -- Lawrence Steinman, Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at Stanford University will give a keynote presentation on “Type 1 Interferons Exacerbate Th17 Autoimmunity” at the 10th Cytokines and Inflammation Conference to be held in San Diego, CA on January 30-31, 2012 by GTC.

Dr. Steinman published in Nature Medicine that the clinical response to IFN-b; therapy is strongly influenced by the Th1/Th17 ‘pathways’. EAE induced with pathogenic TH1 T cells is prevented when IFN-b treatment is given prior to therapy, and that clinical deficits and pathology are reversed, even when IFN-b is given after mice are paralyzed. In contrast, TH17 EAE is exacerbated clinically and inflammation in the central nervous system is increased following administration of IFN-b. He found that serum levels of IL-17F are elevated in a subset of non-responders prior to treatment and non-responders had relapses in the two years after treatment, while responders were relapse free. A combination of low IL-17F and high IL-7 predicted responsiveness to type 1 interferon.

Dr. Steinman is a Professor of Neurology and Neurological sciences and Pediatrics at Stanford University. He was the chair of the Stanford University Program in Immunology for a decade from 2001 to 2011.  His work aims at describing mechanistic biomarkers to predict outcome to therapies in MS.  He has developed two antigen specific therapies, using DNA vaccines, for MS and type 1 diabetes. He was senior author on the seminal 1992 Nature article that reported the key role of a particular integrin in brain inflammation. This research led to the development of the drug Tysabri, which is approved to treat patients with MS and Crohn’s disease.

Dr. Steinman has received numerous honors and awards, including the John M. Dystel Prize in 2004, from the American Academy of Neurology and the National MS Society for his research on MS. He has twice been awarded the Senator Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award by the Nation Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke. Steinman is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.  In 2011 he received the Charcot Prize for Lifetime Achievement in MS research.

The10th Cytokines and Inflammation Conference will bring together a 50-50 mix of academic and industry authoritative experts from leading affiliations (such as Biogen Idec, Merck, ChemoCentryx, FDA, Abbott, Janssen, BMS, MedImmune, Centocor, NIH, Scripps, UCSD, Stanford, UCLA, Sanford-Burnham, LIAI, etc.) to cover many current and relevant aspects of basic, translational or full development cytokine biology and its applicability to human health.

This conference is also part of the Novel Immunotherapeutics Summit, which consists of this track and three other tracks:
1) 4th Immunotherapeutics and Immunomonitoring
2) Immunotherapeutics Partnering and Dealmaking
3) Allergy Drug Discovery and Development

For more information, please visit www.gtcbio.com

# # #

GTC organizes conferences specifically for the biomedical and biopharmaceutical industries. Our goal is to facilitate the exchange of biopharmaceutical and biomedical intelligence between industry leaders, academic and government organizations, and the financial community.