Dennis Burton is the Chairman, and Professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbial Science, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA. He was recently awarded the James and Jessie Minor Chair in Immunology. He received his B.A. in Chemistry from Oxford University and his Ph.D from Lund University, Sweden in physical biochemistry. He is the Scientific Director of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) Neutralizing Antibody Consortium and Neutralizing Antibody Center, Director of The Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology and Immunogen Discovery (CHAVI-ID) at Scripps, and a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT and Harvard, Boston, USA. He has held many research grants from the NIH and has published more than 350 papers in scientific journals. He has received numerous awards including the Jenner Fellowship of the Lister Institute and a Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology. His research is focused on infectious disease, in particular the interplay of antibodies and highly mutable viruses, notably HIV. He is interested in the potential of broadly neutralizing antibodies to inform vaccine design.
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2021 James S. Huston Antibody Science Talent Award Recipient
We are delighted to announce that Laura M. Walker has been selected as the 2021 James S. Huston Science Talent Award Recipient.
Laura is the Senior Director of Antibody Sciences at Adimab and the Chief Scientific Officer and a co-founder of Adagio Therapeutics. Her team at Adimab is focused on understanding human B cell responses to viral infection and discovering broadly neutralizing antibodies to a wide variety of emerging viral pathogens, including Ebola, Zika, yellow fever, and SARS-CoV-2. At Adagio, Laura oversees a broad portfolio of research in the area of viral immunology, including the identification of potent and broadly neutralizing antibodies to advance into clinical development. Prior to joining Adimab in 2012, Laura earned her Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbiology in Dennis Burton’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship in Immunology at The University of California-San Francisco. Laura has received multiple fellowships and awards, including the Endpoints News “The 20 under 40 in biopharma” award in 2020.
Learn more about the James S. Huston Antibody Science Talent Award.
The Society thanks our retiring Directors
The first annual meeting of The Antibody Society’s Board of Directors was held on December 2, 2007. Following their retirement on July 6, 2022, we are recognizing the outstanding contributions of four founding members: Dr. Andrew Bradbury, Prof. Dennis Burton, Prof. Andreas Plückthun and Prof. Jamie Scott. In addition, we are acknowledging the strong contributions of Dr. Greg Adams who became a Director in 2013 and also retired on July 6th. Dr. Bradbury served as our first, and Prof. Scott as our second President. As stated by Dr. Bradbury: “the Society aimed to provide a forum and voice for the thousands of people working in this area and to help attract and encourage young students to all facets of the field”. Amongst other things, this initially was done by ensuring the excellent scientific content of the Antibody Engineering & Therapeutics conference. Since that time, the Society has grown into a mature and world-renowned non-profit trade organization with ~ 2400 members from academia, government agencies and industry, and financially supported by over 40 companies ranging from the smallest biotech companies to the largest pharma firms.
The Society thanks Drs Bradbury and Adams and Profs Burton, Plückthun and Scott for their dedication and service, which has enabled the Society to grow and thrive. Each retiring member was given a special award for outstanding contributions to the Society, in the form of a piece of art which was specifically commissioned for them.
More information about The Antibody Society’s Board of Directors can be found here.
AIRR Community Meeting VI – That’s a Wrap!
The AIRR-C “raison d’etre” is the standardization of AIRR-seq data and its associated metadata, related software tools, pipelines and repositories, etc., as well as efforts aimed at other users, institutions, agencies, journals, and societies to promote international efforts to optimize FAIR practices: making data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable! Similarly, the spirit of accessibility of data, and training, equally applies to individuals from diverse backgrounds, including those from under-represented groups. Using these premises as inspiration the sixth AIRR-C meeting theme “Exploring New Frontiers” was established.
The sixth AIRR Community Meeting (#AIRRC6) was held in La Jolla, CA from May 17-19, 2022. The meeting had two themed “Challenge Sessions” meant to: (i) Initiate and implement a strategic plan for the AIRR Community that integrates the Working Groups’ activities toward the central goal of universally accepted AIRR-seq data standards; (ii) Introduce the Community to multidimensional systems approaches for characterizing immune responses, and how AIRR-seq data can benefit such approaches.
Meetings and presentations took place at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines as well as virtually. The meeting provided opportunities for investigators and trainees to network, to participate in AIRR Community Working Groups and Sub-committee meetings, to participate in poster sessions, to attend software tool demonstrations and tutorials, to participate in student mentoring sessions and matchups and to attend an industry networking reception with a “hot topics in the field” round table session. We were delighted to have such an incredible turnout of industry collaborators and wish to extend our sincere thank you to our generous sponsors.
AIRR Community Meetings are the premier event for research on adaptive immune-receptor repertoires. They are also the primary location where the AIRR Community’s Working Groups and Sub-committees come together in one location to discuss how to push standardization in AIRR-sequencing (AIRR-seq) data and analysis forward. For complete details about AIRR-C Meeting VI check out the final meeting booklet and the video recordings on the AIRR-C YouTube channel.
Just like the biology of immune repertoires is high-dimensional, this meeting’s success was as well! We gathered some of the numbers that best describe the success of the AIRR-C VI meeting.
- 4 Keynote speakers: Dennis Burton (Scripps Research), Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam (Karolinska Institutet), Shane Crotty (La Jolla Institute for Immunology) Atul Butte (University of California, San Francisco)
- 144 in person attendees, 89 remote attendees, 20 countries represented
- 13 Invited speakers, 6 contributed talks
- 45 posters, 8 lightning demos, 6 deep dive tutorials
- 5 hot topics in the field discussions
- 19 sponsors – 5 gold, 5 silver, 7 bronze, 2 institutional
- 8 NIH travel award recipients
A big thank you again to our meeting sponsors for their generous sponsorship and engagement and to the AIRR-C Meetings Sub-committee members for their tireless effort in creating such an exceptional event.
Looking forward to AIRR-C Meeting VII – rumour has it that it will be in Europe in Spring 2024!
Laura M. Walker, PhD
Dr. Laura M. Walker is the Chief Scientific Officer and a co-founder of Adagio Therapeutics. Her team at Adimab is focused on understanding human B cell responses to viral infection and discovering broadly neutralizing antibodies to a wide variety of emerging viral pathogens, including Ebola, Zika, yellow fever, and SARS-CoV-2. At Adagio, Dr. Walker oversees a broad portfolio of research in the area of viral immunology, including the identification of potent and broadly neutralizing antibodies to advance into clinical development. Prior to joining Adimab in 2012, she earned her Ph.D. in Immunology and Microbiology in Dennis Burton’s laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship in Immunology at The University of California-San Francisco. Dr. Walker has received multiple fellowships and awards, including the Endpoints News “The 20 under 40 in biopharma” award in 2020.
Dr. Walker received the 2021 James S. Huston Science Talent Award. The annual Huston Award competition is sponsored by The Antibody Society to recognize and encourage upcoming scientists in the field of Antibody Engineering and Therapeutics.