Immunity and Aging

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ABSTRACT Support is requested for a Keystone Symposia conference entitled Immunity and Aging, organized by Drs. Danica Chen, Sun Hur and Joan Mannick. The conference will be held in Whistler, Canada from October 1-4, 2023. Aging is the single largest risk factor for a wide spectrum of chronic diseases and mortality. An outstanding question in human biology is how we lose the ability to maintain homeostasis and become susceptible to diseases and mortality. However, as groundbreaking research has emerged over the past decade, there is evidence that the decline in function of aging organ systems is caused by a discreet number of biological mechanisms. For instance, recent single cell sequencing studies suggest that one mechanism contributing to dysfunction of the aging immune system is a widespread basal activation of immune cells across tissues. Additionally, dysfunction of the aging immune system results in suboptimal immune responses to vaccines and infectious diseases in older adults, as has been highlighted recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. This Keystone Symposia conference will provide an international venue for researchers to discuss these timely topics, specifically, to understand how the immune system becomes dysregulated during the aging process and how the aging immune system impinges upon the tissue functions, organismal health span and survival. This program touches on questions including: (i) how aging of hematopoietic stem cells contribute to dysfunction of the aging immune system and impacts distant tissues and (ii) how age-related changes in innate and adaptive immune function compromise immunity. Other sessions will discuss the origins of aging-associated inflammation and how inflammation impacts tissue functions and contributes to aging-related conditions. The conference will bring together investigators from multiple fields—immunology, aging, metabolism, stem cell biology and neurobiology—to advance the frontier of immunity and aging.