The International Cytokine & Interferon Society (ICISI) held its 8th Annual Meeting as a virtual meeting: Cytokines 2020, STRUCTURE-FUNCTION AND SYSTEMS BIOLOGY OF CYTOKINE ACTIONS, from November 1-4, 2020. The full program was also available on-demand for 2 weeks following the live-streamed event, which was a lively and fully interactive meeting with a flavor of Seattle! With 1,084 participants from over 42 countries, we are proud to announce that the first-ever Virtual Meeting was a roaring success and included 117 invited speaker and oral presentations and 223 Lightning Talks.

In an effort to support the global response to COVID-19 research, free and open access to most of the content in two sessions on SARS-CoV-2/host interactions and COVID-19 are available starting December 1st, with extended open access, as well as three industry sponsored sessions of interest to the cytokine research community, the ICIS Awards Presentation, the Closing Ceremony/Meeting Review and an invitation to Cytokines 2021 in Cardiff, October 17-20. The final program and the abstracts book are also available for download.

The ICIS Annual Meetings have a distinguished history of presenting cutting edge research from internationally recognized scientists. In recognition of the role of cytokines in COVID-19 and the extraordinary research being done by the cytokine & interferon community, the Local Organizing Committee of the International Cytokine & Interferon Society (ICIS) re-shaped the program to include the latest findings on SARS-CoV-2/host interactions and COVID-19. The pandemic underscores the importance of this meeting and our research to understand the systems biology of cytokines and interferons in human health and disease. Nearly all of the major breakthroughs in COVID-19 treatments and vaccine development have connections to ICIS members in academia, government and industry. Reflecting the diverse scientific interests in the field of cytokine biology, sessions impacting all aspects of cytokine and interferon basic science, clinical development, and medicine were included to provide a comprehensive update on these activities to reveal promising research that will lead to or has already launched cytokine-based therapeutics and immune-modifying biologics to treat COVID-19, cancer, autoimmunity, infectious disease and vaccine applications.

Michael Gale, Jr., PhD, Chair & Ram Savan, PhD, Co-Chair Department of Immunology, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA USA