Barrier tissues, including the gut, skin, lung, oral cavity, and urogenital tract, sit at the front line between host and environment and must continuously distinguish commensals from pathogenic threats. This sensing is achieved through highly dynamic, tissue-specific immune networks that also coordinate and promote repair and growth. Dysregulation of these finely tuned networks can result in a range of chronic inflammatory and infectious diseases. A persistent gap in the field is that barrier immunology has largely developed along tissue-specific lines, despite conserved sensing and defense logic shared between sites.

This Keystone Symposia conference on Barrier Immunity: Sensing, Coordination, and Defense at the Host-Environment Interface aims to bring together investigators working across barrier tissues to define shared and tissue-specific mechanisms governing barrier sensing, immune coordination, and defense. Attendees are expected to leave with (1) a cross-tissue mechanistic framework for barrier immunity rather than a single-organ view, (2) exposure to translational and industry perspectives on how preclinical barrier biology informs therapeutics in inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, and dermatitis, and (3) new collaborations spanning career stage, geography, and academic/industry lines.

The conference is designed to convene mucosal immunologists, dermatologists, pulmonologists, gastroenterologists, oral/urogenital immunologists, microbiologists, and mycologists alongside translational and industry scientists. Interdisciplinary engagement is intended to directly leverage mechanisms first described at one barrier surface (e.g., innate lymphoid cell coordination and epithelial sensing in the gut) that recur, with tissue-specific variation, across other barrier tissues, such as the skin and lung. It is expected that comparisons across barrier sites will reveal conserved versus tissue-specific features. This conference is joint with the Keystone Symposia conference on Fungal Pathogens: From Host Encounters to Disease Outcomes and a joint keynote and plenary session will convene fungal biologists and barrier immunologists around the questions where their work intersects—antifungal T cell immunity and fungal granuloma formation.

Unlike single-tissue meetings, this conference is intended to integrate gut, skin, lung, oral, and urogenital barrier immunology, with joint sessions bridging a specific and emerging link to fungal disease biology. Moreover, this conference is timely: emerging therapeutics targeting IL-23, IL-17, and TL1A are moving from gut to skin to lung indications, making cross-tissue translational dialogue with industry scientists directly relevant to the emerging research programs of attendees.

Unique Career Development Opportunities

This meeting will feature a Career Roundtable where trainees and early-career investigators will have the opportunity to interact with field leaders from across academic and industry sectors for essential career development advice and networking opportunities. Find out more about Career Roundtables here: https://www.keystonesymposia.org/diversity/career-development-initiatives