ISI 2025 was held on 21‑22 August at the University of Galway, Ireland and hosted by Prof Aideen Ryan. The meeting brought together 220 established and early‐career immunologists from Ireland and abroad. Four main thematic sessions structured the meeting - Host‑Pathogen Immunology; Immunity & Inflammation; Multi‑omics in Immunology and Stromal / Cancer Immunology.

​

Keynote and invited speakers included both local and international leaders in immunology: Sarah Walmsley, Rachel McLoughlin, William Agace, John O’Shea, Adam Byrne, Marcus Claesson, Fiona Powrie, Michael O’Dwyer, Karen English, Emma Kerr, and Patrick Forde.

 

We selected 12 proffered talks from the many high-quality abstracts submitted. In order to provide opportunities to as many early career researchers as possible, we also selected 10 postgraduate students and 7 postdoctoral fellows to present in our “Flask Talks” sessions. Early career researchers were provided with the opportunity to act as co-chairs for the sessions, and we continue to lead the way in offering childcare bursaries to our members to ensure as many can attend our community’s annual meeting as possible.

​

Session highlights and themes:
 

Host‑Pathogen Immunology
Rachel McLoughlin’s (Trinity College Dublin) talk on Staphylococcus aureus revealed how this common pathogen actively reshapes host immune responses, particularly by manipulating innate immune cell tuning. Her findings underscore the importance of pathogen-driven immune modulation in determining infection outcomes and potential vaccine targets. Sarah Walmsley’s (University of Edinburgh) presentation, Reprogramming the Neutrophil, highlighted how tissue microenvironments and hypoxic conditions dynamically alter neutrophil function during inflammation. Her work demonstrates that neutrophil plasticity is not only context-dependent but also therapeutically targetable in chronic inflammatory diseases

​

Immunity and inflammation
William Agace (Lund University) presented new insights into the transcriptional and clonal diversity of CD4⁺ T cells across distinct intestinal immune niches in Crohn’s disease. His findings revealed compartment-specific T cell adaptations, suggesting that local microenvironments drive functional heterogeneity with implications for targeted immunotherapies. John O’Shea (National Institutes of Health) delivered a compelling keynote titled Translating Cytokine Signalling: Bench to Bedside & Back, outlined how foundational discoveries in cytokine JAK-STAT signalling have translated into targeted therapies for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, emphasizing the feedback loop between bench research and clinical application driving precision immunomodulation.

​

Adam Byrne (University College Dublin) showcased how metabolic reprogramming of airway macrophages governs their inflammatory or reparative roles in respiratory diseases, identifying metabolic pathways as promising biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

 

Multi Omics in Immunology
Marcus Claesson (University College Cork) presented Decoding the IBD Microbiome: Multi-Omics and Machine Learning Across Space and Time, showcasing how integrating multi-omics data with machine learning can decode the dynamic microbiome changes in inflammatory bowel disease, advancing precision diagnostics and personalized microbiome-targeted therapies. Fiona Powrie’s (University of Oxford) keynote on Translating Immunology into New Therapies for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, highlighted recent advances in understanding immune regulation and tolerance mechanisms in the gut. Her work emphasizes harnessing regulatory T cells and cytokine pathways to develop innovative, targeted treatments for IBD.

​

Stromal/Cancer immunology
Karen English (Maynooth University) discussed the Mechanistic Understanding of the Long-Lived Effects of Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Therapy - how mesenchymal stromal cell therapy exerts long-lived immunomodulatory effects by reprogramming or ‘training’ innate and adaptive immune cells, providing insight into sustained therapeutic benefits beyond the cells’ physical presence.

 

Michael O’Dwyer (University of Galway) presented The Emerging Role of Glycoimmune Checkpoints in Anti-Tumour Immunity, highlighted the emerging role of glycoimmune checkpoints, where aberrant glycosylation on tumour and stromal cells inhibits immune responses, identifying these checkpoints as novel targets to complement existing cancer immunotherapies.

 

Emma Kerr (Queen’s University Belfast) delivered a talk titled Metabolic Sabotage: How Mutant KRAS Tumours Disarm Cytotoxic T Cells in NSCLC, demonstrated how mutant KRAS tumours in NSCLC create metabolic constraints that disarm cytotoxic T cells, stressing the importance of targeting tumour-driven metabolic sabotage to restore effective anti-tumour immunity.

 

Patrick Forde (St. James’s Hospital/John Hopkins) presented Where T Cells Meet the Scalpel: Immunotherapy before Surgery for Lung Cancer, emphasized the growing clinical impact of neoadjuvant immunotherapy in lung cancer, showing how pre-surgical activation of T cells can reprogram the tumour microenvironment, improving surgical outcomes and patient survival.

​

​

Cross‐Cutting Issues & Take‑Home Messages

​

Interdisciplinarity is increasingly essential: immunology is not just about immune cells but also about their interaction with stromal, metabolic and microbiome contexts.

 

Technology is pushing the frontier but also creating bottlenecks: high throughput/sequencing/spatial platforms allowed more detailed dissection, but data volume, reproducibility and cost are limiting factors for many labs.

​

Importance of training and young investigators: the meeting gave good exposure to early career scientists (poster sessions, chairing sessions and speaker slots) which is vital for field sustainability.

​​

​

The ISI 2025 meeting in Galway showcased excellent science and the growing complexity and advancements in immunology in Ireland. The sessions underlined that future progress would depend not only on technology and discovery but also on collaboration, standardization and translation. For many delegates, the meeting stimulated new ideas, potential collaborations and a clearer sense of where the field is going as well as Irelands strengths in Immunology.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​