Why should you join the Society for Mucosal Immunology?

Mucosal immunology and the interaction between the indigenous microflora and the innate and adaptive immune system is one of the hottest areas in biology today. On Medline the number of papers published on mucosal immunology has gone from just over 1000 in 2000 to 15,000 in 2006. At the same time, there remains major challenges in understanding the gut in HIV, making new and effective mucosal vaccines, understanding how the host responds to mucosal pathogens, how pathogens manipulate the host response; epithelial cell biology; and finally in terms of human health, how inappropriate immune reactions at mucosal surfaces can cause such devastating diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, and necrotizing enterocolitis in infants, as well as food allergies and celiac disease. Our aim is to bridge the gap between the high quality immunology presented at meetings such as AAI, and the high quality clinical specialty meetings ( DDW, ATS , FOCIS ), to provide a forum where people interested in immunology at mucosal surfaces can share ideas and learn about the unique nature of the mucosal immune system.

The SMI is thus intended to be a "home" for all those studying and carrying out research in mucosal immunology and THE source for information in mucosal immunology. This includes society news, upcoming meetings, a members directory to allow easy communication with colleagues, job postings , archived editions of Mucosal Immunology Update (the predecessor of Mucosal Immunology) andInternet links . The Members Only Section also links to funding agencies worldwide for research support. Most importantly however membership will allow unlimited access to our new journal Mucosal Immunology sponsored by the Nature Publishing Group, the first edition of which will appear in January 2008.

To act as a catalyst for exchange of new knowledge, SMI also sponsors a biennial International Congress of Mucosal Immunology (ICMI), and has added an annual meeting as a satellite to another major congress (such as FASEB/AAI or FOCIS) in the intervening year. Membership of SMI gives a substantial reduction in registration for the ICMI meeting which occurs every two years with the next scheduled for Boston in 2009 . SMI also supports the annual meetings of the European Mucosal Immunology Group.

If you are not convinced, then contact the chair of the Membership Committee, and find out why they are enthusiastic members of SMI. They will tell you what it has done for them, and why they find membership a continuing professional investment.

Ready to join? Click here.

Welcome to SMI.

Professor Thomas T MacDonald PhD FRCPath FMedSci
President Elect-Society for Mucosal Immunology and Chair of Membership Committee
Dean for Research and Professor of Immunology
Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry
Institute of Cell and Molecular Science
t.t.macdonald@qmul.ac.uk