B Cells and Plasma Cells: Fundamental and Translational Biology

About This Grant

Abstract Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled “B Cells and Plasma Cells: Fundamental and Translational Biology,” organized by Drs. Kim Good-Jacobson, Deepta Bhattacharya and Taras Kreslavsky, with scientific programming input from Keystone Symposia. The meeting will take place March 16–18, 2026 at Keystone Resort in Keystone, Colorado, USA. B cells play a fundamental role in human health and longevity, and are essential for creating long-lasting immunity, with plasma cells and memory B cells providing protection against reinfection. However, when B cells malfunction during chronic infection, autoimmunity, and lymphomas, they can drive immunopathogenesis and disease. This Keystone Symposia conference will discuss recent advances in understanding what makes B cell responses last longer and work better. The meeting will also explore how these discoveries can be used to specifically target B cells for therapeutic intervention and utilize antibodies for diagnostics and immunotherapies. Understanding these mechanisms has become even more timely, given newly emerging pathogens and their variants, the expanding portfolio of vaccine platforms, and the need to engineer the B cell response for more effective therapeutics. The program has been designed to serve as a guide for building effective B cell responses and will feature interdisciplinary talks on B cell roles in vaccine design, mechanisms for promoting long-lasting immune memory, understanding harmful antibody production, and new therapeutic strategies to treat immunologic diseases and develop effective therapeutics to improve public health. This Keystone Symposia meeting will bring together global experts in the biology of plasma cells and memory B cells to present the latest research on how productive antibody responses are mounted, their role in combating infectious diseases, and their dysfunction in allergy and autoimmunity. Accordingly, this conference will be held jointly with the Keystone Symposia conference, “B and T Cell Collaboration in Lymphoid and Nonlymphoid Microenvironments,” enabling cross-disciplinary insights and encouraging innovative collaborations towards identifying novel therapeutic targets.