Bio
Dr. Athanasios Sachinidis holds a degree in Biology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) and a Master’s degree in “Applications of Biology,” specializing in Applied Genetics and Biodiagnostics, from the postgraduate program of the Department of Biology, AUTH. He completed his doctoral dissertation titled “Investigation of the Role of T-bet+ B cells in the Pathogenesis of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus” at the School of Medicine, AUTH, and was awarded a PhD in Immunology with distinction. His main research interests focus on the role of B lymphocytes in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, particularly rheumatic diseases. His work has been presented at national and international conferences in Europe and the United States and has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Clinical & Experimental Immunology, Immunologic Research, Rheumatology International, and the Mediterranean Journal of Rheumatology.

Talk
Harnessing Immune Regulatory Network Metabolism to Combat Autoimmune Diseases

Bio
Dr. Themis Alissafi is Assistant Professor at National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine, and Affiliated Researcher at Biomedical Research Foundation Academy of Athens (RFAA). She pursued her BSc and MSc at the University of Crete (UOC). Her PhD at BRFAA focused on immunology. As an ERS and EAACI fellow she performed postdoctoral research in immunology at Gent University, IMBB and BRFAA. Since 2019 she is the Group Leader of the Immune Regulation laboratory at BRFAA and holds the position of the assistant professor in Biology at Medical School, NKUA. Dr. Alissafi serves as the first European Research Council (ERC) Ambassador to Greece. She is the national representative of the European Network ENOTTA. She is the coordinator of the accelerated seminar on Biomedical Research Methodology and is a member of the steering committee of the Immunology MSc program at NKUA and lecturer of Immunology and Cancer Biology in five postgraduate programs. The focus of her scientific work is on immunological tolerance networks. Her research team seeks mechanistic information on distinct regulatory cells involved in immune responses during autoimmunity and cancer, with a special focus on immune metabolism, in an effort to develop novel, precise therapeutic interventions and to discover innovative biomarkers. Dr. Alissafi’s track-record includes publications, in major scientific journals (i.e. Cell Metabolism, Nature Medicine, JCI, Nature Communications, JEM, PNAS). During her scientific career, she had the honour to receive many prestigious international (ERS, EAACI, EWRR) and national (Kafatos, IKY, HELANI) awards. Her research has attracted > 2.0 million euros funding by the ERC STG 2020, and the HFRI.

Talk
Leveraging Ultra Short-RNA Therapeutics To Treat Autoimmunity

Bio
Prof Michael Gantier leads the Nucleic Acids and Innate Immunity laboratory at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne Australia. With over 20 years of expertise in RNA biology, his work focuses on harnessing RNA to modulate innate immune responses for therapeutic benefit. Trained as a biological engineer in France, he completed his PhD at University College Dublin before moving to Australia to work with Prof Bryan Williams on RNA therapeutics and innate immunity. Since establishing his independent laboratory in 2015, Prof Gantier’s team has uncovered fundamental immunosuppressive mechanisms of RNA therapeutics, culminating in the discovery that RNA cleavage products mimic natural immune checkpoints against autoimmunity (Alharbi et al., Nature Immunology 2026). In collaboration with Noxopharm Ltd, his group has developed a novel class of ultra short RNA based anti inflammatory agents that have recently completed Phase 1 clinical trials (Sapkota et al. bioRxiv 2026). Prof Gantier has received multiple international awards, published extensively in leading journals (inc. Nature, Cell, Nature Immunology, Nature Communications, Nucleic Acids Research etc.), and currently serves as Section Editor of Molecular Therapy Nucleic Acids and board member of the international Nucleic Acid Immunity Society.