The seventh international immunology summer school ABC7 – Autoimmunity, B cells and Complement – was held in Tallinn, Estonia, June 14-16th, 2023 at the Sokos Hotel Viru conference centre. The event was made possible by the EFIS-EJI Meeting Support, funding by the Nordic Complement Community, University of Tartu, and by the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Tallinn and multiple sponsors. The conference program is available here and the abstract book here. We had 69 onsite participants. The keynote lecture by Burhard Becher took place online due to the flight cancellation. There were 36 participants from Estonia, 14 from Finland, 4 from Sweden, 3 from Lithuania, 2 from Denmark, 2 from Latvia and 1 from Spain, Germany, Poland, the UK, Norway, Czechia, the Netherlands and Bulgaria.
From the young participants who submitted an abstract 16 EFIS-EJI grantees were selected according to the first come first serve rule. The list of the grantees can be found here. The two and a half days were filled with versatile activities. Lectures were given by the well-known experts in the complement field (Seppo Meri, Kristina Nilsson-Ekdahl, Peter Garred, Diana Karpman, Tom Eirik Mollnes, Bo Nilsson, Kati Kaartinen) and B cells and autoimmunity (Tobias Freitag, Susan Wong, Pablo Engel, Kai Kisand, Eliisa Kekäläinen, Anna Šediva, Jan Damoiseaux, Pärt Peterson and Aili Tagoma). Career development session was led by Seppo Meri and Aurelija Zvirbliene and actively participated by the students.
Eight students had the opportunity to have a short oral presentation, for the others we had busy poster session. The best oral presentation was awarded to Julia Roguigny and the two poster prize winners were Tuuliki Pomerants and Francisco Osorio-Barrios. Informal interactions between the students and the speakers were enabled during the welcome reception at the venue and during the conference dinner at the open-air museum Rocca al Mare.
Importantly, the Baltic and Polish societies of immunology decided to arrange the regional immunology schools annually. The next school is planned to take place in Poland in 2024, followed by the next event in Lithuania in 2025. The Baltic and Polish societies intend to continue and broaden the support for Ukrainian scientists and students.
