Past Symposia (2015) – Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC)

13^th Annual CBC Symposium

“The Unseen Majority: Microbes in Health and Disease”

DATE: Friday, October 23, 2015
TIME: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
LOCATION: Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Northwestern Memorial Hospital – Feinberg Pavilion
Conference Center, 3rd floor
251 East Huron Street
Chicago, Illinois, 60611

Symposium Recap

Microbes Featured at the 13^th Annual CBC Symposium

November 10, 2015

The 13^th Annual CBC Symposium took place on Friday, October 23, 2015, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. This year’s topic, “The Unseen Majority: Microbes in Health and Disease”, was attended by over 250 students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty, staff and research scientists. Attendees from the three CBC universities were joined by colleagues from multiple Chicago area universities as well as scientists from local biotechnology companies including AbbVie and Metabolon, Inc.

Organizers of the symposium, Howard Shuman (UChicago), Nancy Freitag (UIC) and Laimonis (Lou) Laimins (NU) invited six exceptional speakers with scientific expertise in a diverse array of fields including biochemistry, virology, microbiology, immunology and microbial genomics. The presenters included three CBC university scientists, Michael Federle (UIC), Tatyana Golovkina (UChicago) and Robert Lamb (NU) and three out-of-state researchers, Ruth Ley (Cornell), Charles Rice (Rockefeller), and Julie Segre (NIH). The presentations (click here for the symposium program) examined the role of host genetic variation in shaping the microbiome, relationships between commensal bacteria and the immune system, multiple aspects of microbial-host interactions including affects on viral infections, using genomics to track drug resistant hospital pathogens and bacterial chemical communication pathways in health and disease. These avenues of research will allow a better understanding of the complex relationship between the microbiota and immune system, ultimately resulting in new approaches to maintaining human health and development of more effective disease treatments.

The all day symposium included an interactive poster session. A record number of fifty-eight posters were presented by graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The symposium concluded with a networking reception that provided ample opportunity for discussions leading to initiation of potential new collaborations between the attending scientists.