Adaptive Immune Recognition in Infectious Disease and Cancer

The workshop AIMMREC26: Adaptive immune recognition in infectious disease and cancer was held at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden from 20-24 April 2026. The workshop brought together an international group of scientists working on modelling and measuring quantitative aspects of immune recognition (with a focus on adaptive immune recognition, B cells and T cells), starting from the genomic and molecular levels all the way up to the cell and population scales. It attracted the interest of 72 participants from a variety of countries, e.g., Germany, France, Netherlands, India, Israel, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, UK, New Zealand, and US, and showcased their contributions in the form of 30 invited talks and 31 posters (presented in two different evening sessions).

The program was articulated into five sessions, each of them dedicated to a broad overarching theme: T cell recognition and epitopes, Systems immunology and regulation, Immune dynamics and memory, Viral dynamics and cancer evolution, and Immune stochasticity and cross-reactivity. Each session featured both theoretical and experimental talks delivered either by extremely established and world-class scientists or by early-career researchers whose working is already well recognised in the field. The final session on the Friday, Immune stochasticity and cross-reactivity, gave us the chance to celebrate the scientific legacy of Grant Lythe (Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Leeds, UK) on the occasion of his 60th birthday, whose work has pioneered the rigorous inclusion of stochasticity and cross-reactivity in mathematical models of
T cell-mediated immune responses.

A highlight of the scientific program worth mentioning was the colloquium by Paul G. Thomas, who provided an overview of broad interest on how immune memory forms and develops, and of the experimental and statistical approaches that are increasingly allowing the scientific community to answer quantitative questions in this arena.

The program allowed plenty of time for questions after each talk, resulting in lively scientific discussions that naturally continued over the coffee breaks, lunch and dinner. These discussions, in addition to the two well-attended poster sessions on Tuesday and Thursday evening, are testament to the quality of the scientific contributions presented and the interest they triggered among participants, whose feedback on the workshop’s relevance and usefulness to their own research was extremely positive.

The workshop ended with a discussion session that gave the chance to participants to reflect on open questions and challenges that require a concerted effort of modellers and experimentalists. The discussion revolved around the grand challenge of understanding, quantifying, and modelling molecular T cell (or B cell) receptor cross-reactivity as a central characteristic of immune responses. It also highlighted the need for community-agreed definitions and standards, for the generation and curation of high-throughput and high-quality datasets, and for community initiatives that can channel and synergize scientists’ effort around such challenges.

In summary, AIMMREC26 succeeded in connecting and empowering the biophysical community working on quantitative immunology (theoretical, computational, experimental, and bioinformatics). It provided the participants with valuable opportunities for learning and for exchange, it created potentially long-lasting links between modellers
and experimentalists, and it set an agenda for the community’s next steps.