Following the inspiring opening speech, "Future Perspective of Cancer 
Immunotherapy", delivered by Nobel Prize and Tang Prize laureate Prof. Tasuku 
Honjo at the 14th Asia Pacific Federation of Pharmacologist Conference (APFP) 
on November 26, the 2020 Tang Prize Laureate's Lecture for Biopharmaceutical 
Science, co-organized by the Tang Prize Foundation and The Pharmacological 
Society in Taiwan, took place at the 14th APFP at 1:30 p.m.(GMT+8) on November 
27. Co-hosted by Dr. Wen-Chang Chang, chair of Taipei Medical University's 
board of directors, and Dr. Yun Yen, chair professor at Taipei Medical 
University, this special session featured lectures delivered by three winners 
for the 2020 Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science, Drs. Charles Dinarello, 
Marc Feldmann, and Tadamitsu Kishimoto, providing valuable informaiton on the 
role cytokines play in inflammation and the COVID-19 disease as well as 
possible treatments. 

The first lecture by Dr. Dinarello, titled "Interleukin-1: The Prime Mediator 
of Systemic and Local Inflammation", began with his purification of leukocytic 
pryogen from human white blood cells in 1971. It then took him six years to 
identify two fever-producing molecules, later named IL-1α and IL-1β. 
In 1977, the research outcomes were published in the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences. The second speaker, Dr. Feldmann, shared his 
views on "Translating Molecular Insights in Autoimmunity into Effective 
Therapy". The emphasis of the first half of his lecture was on how he 
discovered that anti-TNF can be effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis. 
During the second half of the talk, he informed us that TNF has two different 
targets: TNF receptor-1(TNFR1), which drives inflammation, and TNF receptor 2, 
which does the very opposite. Therefore, they are "in the process of generating 
tools" and has already blocked TNFR1 without change the function of regulatory 
T cells. Presenting the third lecture on the topic "Interleukin-6: From 
Arthritis to CAR-T and COVID-19", Dr. Kishimoto drew the audience's attention 
to how IL-6 was discovered, why IL-6 is a pleiotropic molecule, and responsible 
for both antibody production as well as inflammation induction. He also shed 
light on IL-6's effects on autoimmune diseases and how IL-6 can trigger 
cytokine storms. 

To help the public gain a better understanding of the latest progress made in 
biomedical sciences, the Tang Prize Foundation will make these three lectures 
available on its official website(https://www.tang-prize.org) afterwards.

SOURCE: The Tang Prize Foundation