This week, we hosted the second CSHL meeting on Fundamental Immunology & Its Therapeutic Potential and chatted with Fiona Powrie, a returning organizer for the meeting. During our conversation, Fiona mentioned the extensive dialogue among attendees around cancer immunology; and in fact: The number of oral sessions related to cancer immunology has doubled since the last iteration of the meeting in 2015.

There's been a real buzz around the place and a lot of exciting data presented. One of the features of this meeting that's different from the other meetings in this area...is that we've had a large number of early-stage scientists who've just set up their labs presenting really new data that has stimulated a lot of discussion from the PhD students and postdocs.

There's been a lot of discussion actually - and you can't stop immunologists talking so there is always a lot of discussion - around new insights in cancer immunology and how we recognize pathogens. There was a very interesting section in regulatory T-cells with some new findings about their specificity, how they're functioning, how they're selected. Of course, that opens up a lot of new avenues across the area of autoimmune and infectious diseases.

For more on Fiona's research, visit her lab's website. And for more conversations with our other meeting organizers and course instructors, go here. Also, to gain a meeting-goer's perspective on this meeting, read our Q&A with Holly Algood.