The history of our Society is short. Originally founded as “Society of Transplantation and Innate Immunity (“STAII”), the society has meanwhile metamorphosed into a true multidisciplinary association - as reflected by its byelaws to be read below. Indeed, recent appreciation that innate immunity provides much more than an initial host defense against microbial infection has propelled the subject to the forefront of many fields. Thus, innate immunity now is thought to provide a broad range of protection against microbial infection and, in addition, responds to injury-induced tissue alteration to contribute to the genesis of autoimmunity, response to vaccines, surveillance against cancer and transplant rejection leading to humoral and cellular auto and alloimmune responses involved in autoimmune diseases and transplantation. Beyond these clearly immunological conditions, innate immunity has been implicated in allergy, atherosclerosis, malignancy, obesity, and osteoporosis, conditions that plague many patients including transplant recipients. Whereas many investigators in the fields of immunology, microbiology, infectious diseases, atherosclerosis, complement, etc., focus on innate immunity, relatively few investigators in experimental and clinical transplantation have taken up this topic in their research programmes.

Accordingly, we have proposed the tentative aims and scopes of the Society of Innate Immunity as follows:

1) The Society of Innate Immunity recognizes itself as a scientific community which claims to be devoted to generating new knowledge and integrating the knowledge from different medical and scientific fields in which events of innate immunity have been recognized to play a dominant and major pathogenic role.

2) Members of the Society shall include those with clinical and/or research interests in the fields of complement, immunology, microbiology, coagulation, vaccine design and those with interest in cell and organ transplantation and may well include those with interests in other diseases such as atherosclerosis, bone disease, obesity, and vascular disease, among other fields. Given the diversity of the potential membership, the society will have a central goal of promoting and facilitating exchange of ideas, study designs, topics of research, data, etc. between the disparate fields in the many locations and venues represented by the membership.

3) The Society should motivate and facilitate young investigators and clinicians to pursue education, research, and eventually practice in matters pertaining to innate immunity.

4) The Society should provide a forum that will bring together investigators and clinicians in the disparate fields of innate immunity for presentation of new research, discussion of ideas and initiation of collaborations.

5) The Society will serve as a source of expertise for governmental and private agencies for such matters as the evaluation of research or clinical proposals, the development of guidelines and the providing of advice.

6) The Society should encourage those involved in the development of agents, therapeutics, and therapeutic regimens to consider implications of innate immunity both to promote efficacy and as a potential complication. Thus, development of agents that modify innate immunity and their application in the field of diseases might be usefully considered such as therapeutics for infectious diseases, atherosclerosis, malignancies, and transplantation complications, whilst such complications of unwanted activation of innate immunity such as SIRS, depletion of complement, and thrombosis are to be avoided.

Dear colleague, please, make up your mind and plan to attend our congress in Ankara, Turkey in May 13-16 this year and be part of the beginning of what I believe will become a flourishing multidisciplinary society dedicated to the fascinating field of Innate Immunity.

Walter Gottlieb Land
President of “SII”