On the eve of Foundation Day, THSTI organized a one-day symposium in a hybrid mode on “INFLAMMATION” at M. K. Bhan Auditorium at THSTI on 14^th July, 2022. Eminent clinicians, scientists & researchers across the country came together to deliberate on INFLAMMATION, a key driver of human health & disease. Prof. N. K. Mehra, Hon. Emeritus scientist, ICMR and former Dean & National Chair, AIIMS was the chief guest. Prof. Amit Awasthi, the organizing secretory of the symposium welcomed the delegates. The symposium saw an overwhelming participation of more than 600 attendees both in physical and online mode. The symposium was divided into 6 thematic sessions covering topics on basics of inflammation, its role in human health and diseases and the cellular mediators of inflammation.

Session 1 was chaired by Prof. Sudhanshu Vrati (ED, RCB) and Prof. A. K. Pandey (ESI, Faridabad) and included luminary talks by Prof. Pramod Garg (ED, THSTI), Dr. Anurag Agarwal (Dean, Biosciences and Health Research, Ashoka University) and Prof. Amit Awasthi (THSTI). The session focused on the broader topics of mediators of inflammation and its relation with health and diseases.

Session 2 was chaired by Prof. Shinjini Bhatnagar (Prof. of eminence, THSTI) and Prof. Dwaipayan Bharadwaj (JNU) and covered areas of inflammation induced by bacterial infection through mitochondrial factors and the role of gut microbiota in inflammation. Dr. Dhiraj Kumar (ICGEB), Dr. Bhabatosh Das (THSTI) and Dr. Dipyaman (IICB, Kolkata) delivered talks in this session.

Session 3 was chaired by Prof. S. K. Sarin (ED, ILBS) and Prof. Anoop Saraya (AIIMS) and focused on type I diabetes as a model disease of inflammation discussing the crucial of haplotypes and population genetics. Prof. Vikas Agarwal (SGIPGMR, Lucknow) enlightened the audience with the therapeutic targets of inflammation and their success story in clinical trials.

Session 4 was chaired by Prof. N. K Ganguly (Former director, ICMR) and Prof. Govind Makharia (Prof., AIIMS) and involved talks on the tumor microenvironment in understanding the inflammation for future therapeutic strategies by Prof. Sameer Bakhshi (AIIMS) and Prof. Girdhari Lal (NCCS, Pune). The last talk of the session was delivered by Prof. Jagmeet Madan (Prof, SNDT University, Mumbai) in an online mode where she talked on how dietary components could influence the inflammation heomostasis.

Session 5 was chaired by Prof. Kalpana Luthra (Prof., AIIMS) and Prof. Sunil Arora (PGIMER, Chandigarh) and focused on topis of inflammatory diseases of the bowel (IBD) covering molecular mechanisms and diversity in the UC and CD by Dr. Saurabh Kedia (AIIMS) and Dr. Soumen Basak (NII).

The final session (Session 6) was chaired by Prof. N. K. Mehra and focused on presentations by international speakers viz., Prof. Chen Dong (Tsingua Univeristy, China) who spoke on the role of IL17 in the induction of mucosal inflammation, and Prof. Vijay Kuchroo (Harvard Medical school, USA). He gave an insight into the stemness of pathogenic Th17 cells investigating the mechanism of Th17 stem-ness in the gut.

The symposium was appreciated by all the delegates. Prof. Mehra congratulated the organizers for a very engaging, enriching and detailed symposium. He also said that such symposiums should be held regularly.

The symposium ended with a vote of thanks by Dr. Amit Pandey (THSTI).