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 (Fig. 1), and has steadily increased the number of attendees to over 300. Unfortunately, the most recent edition, organized by Zhinan Yin (Guangzhou University) in late 2021, had to take place via zoom (except for the Chinese community) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

With this background, and inspired by this tradition in our closer research community, it is our great pleasure and honor to organize the 10^th International gd T cell conference in the beautiful and historical city of Lisbon, Portugal! 

We will be expecting around 350 participants from all over the globe, and we have planned for a 4-day conference (20-23 June 2023) that will feature 50 talks (including an opening keynote lecture by gd T cell pioneer, Adrian Hayday) and 3 poster sessions. In the tradition of this conference, abstract selection will focus on unpublished data, which means that many exciting findings will be shared for the first time at the international level. We are certain this will be a conference to enjoy and remember! 

See YOU in Lisbon in June 2023!

With our best regards,
Bruno Silva-Santos & Julie Ribot
On behalf of the Organizing Committee of the 10^th International gd T cell conference