The MASIR conferences are dedicated to the dissemination of information about the measurement of antigen-specific immune responses -- a topic that is only covered tangentially in other meetings. Hence, this conference provides an outstanding opportunity for a broad swath of researchers to share information about a common set of technologies. The first MASIR conference was held in Courmayeur in January of 2005, and was attended by 175 people; the second was held in Santorini in June of 2006, and was attended by 225 people.

This year's meeting will be organized in a somewhat different fashion than the previous meetings. More than half of the sessions will be more "workshop" in nature, in which experts will be providing a more extended discussion about a specific technology. For each of the approximately one dozen techniques that comprise these workshops, the presentations will be highly structured and designed to go into depth about the technology. Specifically, we are asking speakers to follow a common framework: (1) Introduction (overview of the technique, what it is designed to do, how it compares to other techniques); (2) a description of the methodology; (3) a discussion of the potential problems or hurdles that are concomitant with the implementation of the technique; (4) presentation of aspects required for validation of the technique: Sensitivity, Specificity, Robustness, Linearity, Reproducibility, calibration across multiple sites, and so forth; (5) performance examples; direct comparison/contrast with other methods; and (6) a summary of the technique, where it stands for use in clinical trials (e.g., GLP vs. research settings), and where improvements or future developments are likely to take place for the technique.

Each presentation will be scheduled for 30-45 minutes, and should be designed to be interactive (i.e., inviting questions and discussion throughout). Of course, each Speaker will need to divide the alloted time and focus differently among the topics above, given the different states of development of the various techniques. However, we would like that every presentation follow the rough guideline above (and we will supply a small template powerpoint on which to build the presentation). Please see below a list of the various topics that we are hoping to address in the meeting.