Meeting Highlights 2004 © Ashley Publications Ltd ISSN 1471-2598 253 Ashley Publications ww w.ashley-pub.com 1. Dendritic cells and costimulation 2. Autoimmunity 3. Infection and immunity 4. Allergy 5. Clinical immunology 6. Apoptosis and cell death 7. Tumour immunology 8. Transplantation 9. Vaccination and immunopharmacology 10. Expert opinion For reprint orders, please contact: reprints@ashley-pub.com General The 34th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Immunology with participation of the Polish Society of Experimental and Clinical Immunology 24 – 27 September 2003, Berlin, Germany PJ Wysocki † , M Mackiewicz-Wysocka & A Mackiewicz † Department of Cancer Immunology, University of Medicine at GreatPoland Cancer Center, Poznan, Poland The 34th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Immunology was held in Berlin on 24 – 27 September 2003. This meeting, organised for the first time in cooperation with the Polish Society for Experimental and Clinical Immunol- ogy, gathered 1200 participants, mostly from central Europe. The programme comprised > 30 symposium lectures and > 750 oral and poster presentations. The main concept of this meeting was based on the rule of ABC – Applied, Basic and Clinical immunology. The state-of-the-art lectures devoted to immuno-based therapies provided by experts in the particular fields discussed some well-known therapeutic approaches. However, several workshop pres- entations demonstrated novel approaches employing biological therapies. These lectures are the focus of these meeting highlights. Expert Opin. Biol. Ther. (2004) 4(2):253-256 1. Dendritic cells and costimulation B Scheel (Tuebingen, Germany) demonstrated the role of stabilised RNA as a danger signal in antitumour vaccination strategies. Stabilisation of mRNA can be achieved by interaction with cationic proteins or by modification of the phos- phodiester backbone. In vivo, such a stabilised RNA, unlike CpG DNA, becomes degraded within a few minutes. It does not activate B cells, nor does it trigger splenomegaly in injected mice. In VM/Dk mice bearing p560 glioma cell- induced tumours, triple peritumoural injection of stabilised RNA induced regres- sion of all tumours, whereas no effects were observed in a control group receiving a plain buffer. A Schuetz (Munich, Germany) discussed the utilisation of recombinant baculovi- rus vectors for transduction of human dendritic cells (DCs). For this purpose he used an Autographa californiaca nuclear polyhedrosis virus (AcNPV) carrying enhanced green fluorescent protein gene. Immature DCs could be effectively trans- duced with the recombinant AcNPV. Moreover, infection of immature DCs by AcNPV dramatically decreased their pinocytic activity and upregulated their matu- ration markers (CD83, CD86, HLA-DR). Such mature DCs turned out to be strong stimulators of naive CD4+ T cells.