Professor Masaru Ishii received his M.D. (1998) and Ph.D. (2005) from the University of Osaka, Japan. He began his medical career as a resident at Osaka University Hospital and the National Osaka-Minami Hospital, followed by an academic appointment as Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Osaka. His career includes key roles in immunology and rheumatology, including a postdoctoral fellowship at the NIH (USA) and leadership positions at the Immunology Frontier Research Center. Since 2013, he has served as Professor and Chair of Immunology and Cell Biology at the University of Osaka and became Dean of the Graduate School of Medicine in 2025. He also holds an adjunct position as Project Leader at the National Institutes of Biomedical Innovation, Health and Nutrition. A globally recognized expert in immunology, osteoimmunology, and bone biology, Professor Ishii has received numerous awards including the JSPS Prize, Osaka Science Prize, JSI Prize, and JCR Scientific Award. He has authored over 170 publications in top-tier journals such as Nature, Nature Communications, Nature Medicine, and Journal of Experimental Medicine. He serves on the boards of multiple professional societies, including the Japanese Society for Immunology, Japanese College of Rheumatology, and the International Union of Basic & Clinical Pharmacology.

Tenured researcher at the National Cancer Institute (INCA), Leader of the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Laboratory; Professor at INCA's Postgraduate Program in Oncology; FAPERJ scholarship holder, "Young Researcher of Our State" program and CNPq Productivity scholarship holder Level 2; Affiliate member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. Co-Founder of OneSkin and Spectra Startups. She has a bachelor's and master's degree in Biochemistry from the Federal University of Viçosa, a doctorate in Bioinformatics from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (with a sandwich period at NIH - National Institute of Health, Bethesda, United States). She had professional experience in Bioinformatics during her postdoctoral studies at the Gene Center at Ludwig Maximilian München University, Germany and at the Center for Computational Biology of the Cancer and Genomic Sciences Institute - University of Birmingham, England, as a Visiting Researcher. She works in the area of Bioinformatics with an emphasis on the analysis and integration of different omics and the application of artificial intelligence techniques in cancer biology.

A/Prof Lisa Ebert has spent over 25 years researching the immune system, cancer, and interactions between the two. She completed her PhD at the University of Adelaide in the field of T cell migration and chemokine biology, and undertook postdoctoral research positions at the University of Bern (Switzerland) and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (Melbourne). During this time, she developed a focus on understanding how the immune system interacts with cancer, and using this knowledge to develop and improve cancer immunotherapies. In 2011, she returned to Adelaide at the Centre for Cancer Biology – a unique alliance between the South Australian public health system and the University of South Australia – where she now leads the Cancer Immunotherapy research group. A/Prof Ebert’s current research is focussed on developing innovative immune-based therapies for brain cancer, including CAR-T cells and bi-specific T cell engagers; and identifying factors that determine the success of checkpoint blockade immunotherapy in melanoma patients. These studies are conducted at the interface between laboratory and clinic, with close ties to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Her research is currently funded by the NHMRC, Cancer Australia and several philanthropic organisations. She has >50 peer-reviewed publications in the immunology and oncology space, which have received >3,700 citations, and a h-index of 31.

Dr. Chen is an Assistant Research Fellow at the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Center, Academia Sinica. After starting her career as a pharmacist, she earned her Ph.D. from the Institute of Pharmacology at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. Before joining Academia Sinica, she was a research scientist at the Immunotherapy Research Center at Houston Methodist Research Institute. Drawing on her interdisciplinary expertise in pharmacy, pharmacology, and immunology, Dr. Chen’s research aims to connect basic scientific discovery with translational applications. Her primary focus is on developing new immunotherapies and natural product-based therapeutics. Her team investigates the biology of pathological myeloid cells—specifically how they interact with other cells in the tumor microenvironment and their role in subsequent immune responses. A significant area of her work involves studying these myeloid cells in the context of persistent inflammation, which is common in conditions like cancer and aging. Furthermore, Dr. Chen has identified several medicinal plant-derived products as potential myeloid-targeted phyto-medicines, offering promising directions for new drug development and immunomodulatory and nutritional therapies.