A greeting from the president

 The 67th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Allergology (JSA) will be held at Chiba Makuharimesse, Chiba, Japan from Friday June 22nd to Sunday June 24th, 2018. The Department of Otorhinolaryngology and Head & Neck Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine at Chiba University will take charge of the meeting. The theme of the meeting is ‘the collaboration of basic science with clinical medicine, the cooperation of universities with industries to develop new treatments for allergic diseases’. For this meeting, we are now finalizing several new projects.
 Recently, many advancements have been observed in the research and medical managements in allergic diseases. The role of innate immunity, limitation and contradiction of Th1/ Th2 unbalance theory, participation of pathogenic Th2 cells, modification by epigenetic change, as well as autophagy in allergic diseases have become attractive in basic science field. In clinical fields, not only drug therapy with the inhibition of chemical mediators or inflammatory mediators, but also a new generation of immunotherapy is the object of many clinician’s attention. In addition, the evaluating methods for the efficacy of the treatments by clinical trials have been developing and infiltrating. The collaboration of basic science with clinical medicine, and the cooperation of universities with industries are efficient ways for developing epoch-making treatments.
 We have organized two symposiums as one specific project. One is ‘Open the way for understanding of the pathogenesis and control on allergic diseases by basic immunologists’ that was proposed from the Japanese Immunological Society to make more intense collaboration with JSA. The other special symposium is ‘allergen specific immunotherapy’. We are apt to expect immunotherapy will have the extremely beneficial effects, however there is still a lack of evidence to support this. Careful and steady studies are necessary.
 This year, it was agreed between JSA and European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) that a special symposium would be organized for each annual meeting by the society. The first of these special symposiums is titled ‘From disease mechanisms to guidelines for clinical practice’ by EAACI and will be held at this 67th Annual Meeting of JSA. Professor Antonella Murano, Professor Carsten Schmidt-Weber, Prof. Iona Agache will give presentations on this topic.
 In the meeting, around other 20 distinguished foreign researchers will participate, and not only as invited lecturers, but also as symposiasts, and will discuss their topics with Japanese participants.
 The meeting venue faces Tokyo Bay and you can enjoy free time in the park or shopping at the fashionable mall around the venue. It is about 30 minutes by train on Keiyo line from Tokyo Station, and about 45minutes by limousine bus services from Haneda Airport.
 We are looking forward to engaging in meaningful discussion with all participants during the meeting.