Programme

Tak W. Mak is internationally known for his pioneering work on the genetics and molecular biology of cancer and the immune system. In 1984, his group was the first to clone the gene encoding the human TCRβ chain, providing the basis for understanding immune recognition and regulation. This discovery was the foundation of CAR-T and TCR-T treatments. His team also created dozens of genetically modified mice to demonstrate their functions. They include PTEN, Chk2, BRCA etc. Perhaps the most significant is their demonstration that CTLA4 negatively regulates T cell activation, paving the way for checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy. Most recently, his team established that the brain communicates with the immune system via T and B cells producing acetylcholine. This discovery advanced a theme of neuroimmunology not previously appreciated.

In the biotech arena, Dr. Mak co-founded Agios Pharmaceuticals and Treadwell Therapeutics. These companies specialize in delineating metabolic vulnerabilities in tumour cells that can be exploited as novel cancer therapies. Two IDH inhibitors are now FDA-approved for AML, liver and brain cancer treatments, and three first-in-class agents targeting aneuploidy in advanced tumours are now in phase II clinical trials.

Hai Qi received his Bachelor of Medicine degree from the Beijing Medical University and Ph.D. in Pathology from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. After postdoctoral training at NIH with Dr. Ronald Germain, he joined Tsinghua University in 2009, where he is currently a Professor in Immunology. His group is interested in how durable humoral immune memory develops and functions and has made important contributions to our understanding of germinal center biology, follicular helper T cell development and function and neuroimmune regulation of humoral immunity. Dr. Qi is an HHMI International Research Scholar, a New Cornerstone Investigator, and has received numerous awards including a Tan Jiazhen Life Science Innovation Award, a Shulan Medicine Young Scholar Award, an Outstanding Achievement Award for Higher Education Scientific Research by the Ministry of Education, and an AAI-BD Biosciences Investigator Award by American Association of Immunologists.

Tak W. Mak

Senior Scientist, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre at University Health Network

University Professor, Department of Medical Biophysics & Immunology, University of Toronto

Co-Director, Centre for Oncology and Immunology Hong Kong Science Park, Department of Pathology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, University of Hong Kong

Wenwen Zeng serves as a professor at the Institute for Immunology and the School of Basic Medical Sciences, Tsinghua Medicine, Tsinghua University, in Beijing. She earned her B.S. degree from Tsinghua University and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. She completed postdoctoral training at Genentech Inc. and Rockefeller University. She has received the Youth Technology Prize, the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars, the Outstanding Young Scholar Award from the Qiu-Shi Science & Technologies Foundation. She serves as an associate editor for AJP-Endo, Endocrinology, and Molecular Immunology, and is on the editorial boards of Protein & Cell, Science Bulletin, Advanced Science, Journal of Genetics and Genomics, and Oxford Open Immunology. The team studies the functional patterns of the autonomic nervous system and brain-body communications The work on brain diseases aims to understand how the nervous and immune systems form complex networks in pathophysiology.

Burkhard Becher is Professor and Chair of the Institute of Experimental Immunology at the University of Zurich, where he leads the Unit for Inflammation Research. He studied Biology at the University of Cologne and completed his doctoral training in neuroimmunology in Canada. Following postdoctoral work in the United States, he was recruited to the University Hospital Zurich in 2003 as an Assistant Professor and was appointed full Professor and Chair in 2008.

Prof. Becher has since built an internationally visible research program at the interface of immunology, neuroscience, and translational medicine. His work addresses fundamental mechanisms of immune regulation in inflammation and cancer, using advanced experimental and single-cell approaches.

He has received numerous distinctions, including being named a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics every year since 2018, and he was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2019. In addition to his research leadership, he serves on scientific and editorial boards and is strongly committed to mentoring and institutional leadership in immunology.

Min Peng received his Ph.D. in immunology from Peking Union Medical College, China, in 2010. From 2010 to 2017, he conducted postdoctoral research in Ming O. Li’s laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where his work focused on nutrient sensing and immunometabolism. In 2017, Min Peng joined Tsinghua University, where he now leads a research team in T cell biology. His laboratory focuses on T cell memory and immunotherapy, aiming to address key challenges in T cell–based therapies. Recent studies from his group have demonstrated the induction of a synthetic state of T cells and revealed their potential therapeutic applications in common diseases such as asthma.

Morning Networking Break

Heidi GS Ling is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). She obtained her Bsc and PhD at HKU and did her postdoctoral training at Imperial College London. She starts her own group in 2019 and her primary research interest lies in understanding the mechanisms behind immune dysregulation in various chronic inflammatory diseases, particularly those that contribute to inflammation-driven cancers.

Ling’s research focuses on the metabolic reprogramming of immune cells in chronic inflammatory diseases. Her laboratory employs the emerging technologies from the field of immunometabolism to assess the effects of sustained inflammation on exhausted T cell differentiation as well as the implications of tumor-immune coevolution on the efficacy of cancer immunotherapy.

Meng Michelle Xu is an Associate Professor at the School of Basic Medical Sciences and Institute for Immunology, Tsinghua University. She received her Bachelor of Pharmacology from Capital Medical University in 2007 and earned her Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2012. From 2013 to 2017, she conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago. In early 2018, she returned to Tsinghua University to establish an independent research group. Dr. Xu’s research team investigates the complex interactions between immune cells, tumor cells and tumor microenvironment (TME) in different cancer settings, thereby developing novel anticancer immunotherapies to improve clinical benefit. Her work particularly delves into how tumor cells evade immune surveillance by co-opting RNA modification programs found in both tumor cells and host immune cells.

Morning networking break

Cheng-Lung Ku is Director of the Center for Molecular and Clinical Immunology, where his research focuses on the mechanisms of human immune dysregulation that underlie susceptibility to infection and autoimmunity. He pioneered the study of anti-cytokine autoantibodies, identifying anti–interferon-γ autoantibodies as a major cause of disseminated nontuberculous mycobacterial disease, defining their HLA associations, and demonstrating their broader impact on host defense against diverse pathogens. His laboratory subsequently established high-throughput platforms for human monoclonal antibody cloning, enabling systematic dissection of pathogenic anti-cytokine autoantibodies across multiple specificities. His work has been published in Nature Medicine, Blood, The Journal of Experimental Medicine, and Science Immunology. Dr. Ku has received multiple honors, including the Outstanding Research Scholar Award from the Chinese Society of Immunology (Taiwan), the Academia Sinica Young Scholar Publication Award, and the Wu Ho-Su Medical Award. Beyond fundamental immunology, his group advances translational research in autoimmune nephropathies, vitiligo, and immune-cell–based therapies, with a strong emphasis on drug development. This bench-to-bedside vision has been recognized by major technology transfer awards, reflecting his leadership at the interface of discovery science and clinical innovation.

CS Lau has been instrumental in promoting rheumatology in Hong Kong and beyond. He presided over the Hong Kong Society of Rheumatology (1997 – 2001) and was Founding Chairman of the Hong Kong Arthritis & Rheumatism Foundation (2001). He was the President of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine (2016 – 2020), a statutory body for medical and dental specialist training, and a key advisory body to the HKSAR Government on health-related policies. In addition, he sits on numerous strategic committees/working groups of the Health Bureau, Hospital Authority and Department of Health.

Regionally, CS Lau was President of the Asia Pacific League of Rheumatology Associations (APLAR) (2006-2008) and co-founded the Asia Pacific Lupus Collaboration. Beyond the Asia Pacific region, he was a Member of the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (1999–2002), European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) Task Force on Rheumatoid Arthritis Treatment Recommendations (2019) and EULAR Scientific Committee (2019-2023). He was selected as an Honorary Member of EULAR in 2022 and a member of the Academia Europaea in 2023; and was conferred the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa by the University of Glasgow in 2024. He is listed in the world’s top 2% most cited scientists by Stanford University.

Lai Guan Ng conducted his PhD studies at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney, Australia. Following his postdoctoral training, Dr. Ng joined the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) in 2009 to establish his own laboratory. Over the next 13 years, he established himself as a leader in the field of myeloid cell biology. His research primarily focuses on unraveling the complexities of myeloid cell ontogeny, cellular behavior, and tissue adaptation. In 2023, Dr. Ng accepted a new position as a Senior Investigator at the Shanghai Immune Therapy Institute, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for Systems Immunology and as a Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China. More recently, Dr. Ng relocated to the School of Medicine at Westlake University in Hangzhou, China. Dr. Ng’s contributions to the field of immunology are exemplified by his numerous publications in leading journals such as Science, Nature, Science Immunology, Immunity, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Science Advances, Advanced Materials, and Nature Protocols. He has also been listed as one of Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers for six consecutive years (2020–2025). Most recently, he was selected to join the prestigious New Cornerstone Investigator program.

Morning networking break