Historic Banbury Conference Launches AI-powered Initiative to Decipher Human Immunity
COLD SPRING HARBOR, NY – November 14, 2025 – The Human Immunome Project (HIP) convened the first meeting of their Scientific Partner Network, featuring the world’s leading systems immunology experts, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s prestigious Banbury Center, where the Human Genome Project strategy was incubated. “If reading the human genome 24 years ago was akin to going to the Moon, decoding the human immunome is like going to Mars,” said HIP Executive Board Chair Jane Metcalfe.
The invitation-only meeting (November 2-5) united pioneering scientists from ten founding institutions across five continents to accelerate development of the world’s most comprehensive state-of-the-art dataset of immune profiles from diverse global populations.
The researchers acknowledged an urgent imperative to transform our fragmented, siloed understanding of human immunity into actionable intelligence that can predict, prevent, and precisely treat disease across all populations.
HIP’s approach leverages revolutionary scientific advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and multi-omic integration, combining analysis of genomics (DNA), epigenomics (DNA modifications), transcriptomics (RNA), proteomics (proteins), and metabolomics (metabolites). The Scientific Partner Network will engage their ongoing research cohorts, and establish standardized protocols and data frameworks, enabling coordinated scientific advances across the world that would not be possible for any single institution to achieve.
As the COVID-19 pandemic starkly illustrated, there are dramatic differences in immune responses that determine who thrives and who succumbs not only to pathogens but also to non-infectious diseases, such as autoimmune disorders, cancers, and neurodegenerative diseases.
“In the emerging field of “multi-omics,” the immunome occupies a unique position as both a sensor and a memory system. Today, we lack fundamental understanding of why immune responses vary so dramatically between individuals,” noted John Tsang, HIP Co-Chief Science Officer. “By integrating cutting-edge AI with unprecedented immune system profiling, we can build the predictive models that will transform reactive medicine into proactive health protection.”
“If the genome is life’s blueprint and the exposome our environmental diary, then the immunome is the living record of how we’ve learned to recognize and respond to every threat we’ve encountered,” explained Shai Shen-Orr, Co-Chief Science Officer of HIP. “The immunome simultaneously contains our history, our present state, and our future response capacity. In its complexity, it contains the critical information needed to transform health outcomes.”
“Imagine walking into your doctor’s office and getting an immune system ‘report card’—understanding your immunological age, predicting which treatments will work best for you, and knowing which diseases you’re at risk for before symptoms appear. That’s the future we’re building,” he added.
Rebecca Leshan, Executive Director of the Banbury Center, noted the historic significance of the meeting: “From the Human Genome Project to CRISPR technology, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory conferences have heralded biology’s greatest breakthroughs. I expect we will be referencing the Human Immunome Project gathering at Banbury as a historic moment triggering far-reaching advances for human health.”
“Our success won’t be measured just in papers published or patents filed, but in actual health impacts,” emphasized Jane Metcalfe. “Our goal is nothing less than decoding immunity for all humanity.”
About the Banbury Center
Founded in 1890, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has shaped contemporary biomedical research and education with programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology and quantitative biology. Home to eight Nobel Prize winners, the private, not-for-profit Laboratory employs 1,000 people including 600 scientists, students and technicians. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Banbury Center, established by an endowment from Charles Sammis Robertson, is globally renowned for its small discussion meetings in the biosciences. This historic venue was opened on Sunday, June 14, 1977, by Francis Crick who gave a talk on How Scientists Work, and the first meeting was held here in May 1978. As of 2024, the Center has convened more than 800 meetings, bringing together over 20,000 experts (including 84 Nobel laureates).
About the Human Immunome Project
The Human Immunome Project (HIP) is pioneering a new model for human health by decoding the immune system. We envision a world where a new understanding of human immune response variability is harnessed to improve health outcomes for all. The HIP Scientific Partner Network is charting a roadmap to revolutionize how we monitor and leverage the human immune system for improved health outcomes. Inaugural members are:
About the HIP Scientific Partners
Allen Institute
The Allen Institute is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit medical research organization dedicated to understanding life and advancing health. Through bold moonshot initiatives, we combine big science, team science, and open science to push beyond conventional limits and create new foundational knowledge. By openly sharing our data, tools, and models, we accelerate scientific progress and improve lives everywhere.
The European Hub for HIP: DZNE, University of Bonn and the Swarm Learning Consortium:
The German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen, DZNE), the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2 at the University of Bonn, as well as the Consortium on “Swarm Learning for Precision Medicine in Infectious Diseases and Pandemic Preparedness” are an interconnected research ecosystem focusing on innovative approaches to medical data analysis and research, with DZNE providing expertise in neurodegenerative diseases and ImmunoSensation contributing immunological research capabilities. DZNE serves as the current host of the “DZNE Swarm Learning Hub” which provides the technological framework for secure, privacy-preserving collaborative AI applications in medical research. DZNE, ImmunoSensation, and the Swarm Learning Consortium will collectively serve as the European Hub for HIP.
The Human Functional Genomics Project:
Coordinated from the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, the Human Functional Genomics Project is a large-scale project that aims to identify the genetic and environmental factors that impact inter-individual variation in immune responses in homeostasis and immune-mediated diseases. The consortium is an international network of nine academic institutions on four continents, currently investigating more than 25 cohorts of healthy populations and diverse immune-mediated diseases around the world.
HypoVax Global:
The HypoVax Global Knowledge hub aims to tackle the problem of vaccine hyporesponsiveness by creating a platform that mobilizes global researchers working in diverse fields related to vaccines to form a strong network focused on the Global South. The hub was initiated through a Spinoza Prize awarded to Professor Maria Yazdanbakhsh of Leiden University Medical Center working closely with collaborative partners around the world. The hub’s vision is that global researchers work together towards a common goal of finding interventions to reverse vaccine hyporesponsiveness.
RIKEN
RIKEN, a National Research and Development Agency, is Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines. Founded in 1917, initially as a private research foundation, RIKEN has grown rapidly in size and scope, today encompassing a network of world-class research centers and institutes across Japan.
The Center for Human Systems Immunology at Stanford Medicine
A leader in the biomedical revolution, Stanford Medicine has a long tradition of leadership in pioneering research, creative teaching protocols and effective clinical therapies. Our close proximity to the resources of the university — including the Schools of Business, Law, Humanities and Sciences, and Engineering, our seamless relationship with our affiliated adult and children’s hospitals, and our ongoing associations with the entrepreneurial endeavors of Silicon Valley, make us uniquely positioned to accelerate the pace at which new knowledge is translated into tangible health benefits.
The Sustainable Sciences Institute (SSI)
The Sustainable Sciences Institute (SSI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing scientific research capacity in areas of the world with pressing health problems. Headquartered in Oakland, California, SSI’s main research center is in Nicaragua where, for over 25 years, it has carried out research on infectious diseases and provided on-site scientific training funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, private foundations and individual donors. SSI empowers local scientists through training in laboratory methods, diagnostics, epidemiology, grant-writing, manuscript-writing, and bioinformatics. Its programs focus on infectious diseases, including arboviruses, influenza, and hepatitis C, while leveraging community engagement and sustainable research practices. A cornerstone of this work is SSI’s leadership in long-standing cohort studies in Nicaragua, which provide unique insights into dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and other emerging infections. SSI’s founder and President, Dr. Eva Harris, was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. Using these funds, she founded SSI together with Dr. Josefina Coloma, SSI’s Executive Director, and others in 1998. In partnership with Dr. Harris’s group at the University of California, Berkeley, and Nicaraguan colleagues, SSI coordinates the Pediatric Dengue Cohort Study (PDCS), a 21-year prospective cohort study based in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology
The Systems Immunology & Precision Medicine Laboratory at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, established in 2012, focuses on developing novel analytics for studying the immune system and applies these tools to investigate the drivers of immune variation and advance immune-based precision medicine.
WEHI (The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
WEHI is where brilliant minds collaborate and innovate to make life-changing scientific discoveries that help people live healthier for longer. Our medical researchers have been serving the community for more than 100 years, making transformative discoveries in cancer, infection and immunity, and lifelong health. At WEHI, we are brighter together.
CSEI, The Yale Center for Systems and Engineering Immunology at Yale University:
The CSEI at the Yale University School of Medicine (YSM) is a worldclass center of research for systems, quantitative, and synthetic immunology. It brings together Yale faculty and trainees from numerous departments across Yale University, including the School of Medicine, School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to develop cutting-edge experimental, computational, and AI technologies to predict and engineer immune system behavior in health and disease.
PHOTO CREDIT: Constance Brukin/CSHL
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