Around 350 participants from all over the globe took part at the conference. The 4-day conference featured 50 talks (including an opening keynote lecture by γδ T cell pioneer, Adrian Hayday) and 3 poster sessions.
Back in March 2004, scientists from the USA, Europe, Asia and Australia gathered at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver, Colorado, for a two-day conference fully dedicated to γδ T cells. This resulted from a grass roots initiative supported by a handful of γδ T-cell researchers, especially the conference organizers, Rebecca O’Brien and Willi Born, and sponsored by the departments at the National Jewish. There were less than 100 participants but the program was rich in 50 short talks by both young researchers and established experts in the field. At the end of the meeting, a vote established a general consensus to continue with this type of conference as a biannual event, since it provided unique opportunities for scientific exchange that did not exist elsewhere. The next “International γδ T cell conference” took place in 2006, in La Jolla, California, organized by Wendy Havran and Julie Jameson (Scripps Institute), and it gathered almost twice as many researchers (165), around a program that again contained 50 scientific talks.
Since these seminal events in the USA, the event has moved to Europe and Asia, and has steadily increased the number of attendees to over 300.
