A Growing Network Takes Stock: Highlights from the 2026 Colton Consortium Symposium

The evening’s networking sessions offered a more informal counterpart, giving researchers structured time for brief, one-on-one conversations across centers and disciplines, designed to foster connections and future collaborations.

From left to right: Amit Bar-Or, MD, David Porter, MD, and Andrew Chan, MD, PhD discussing advances in therapeutic development for autoimmunity. (Photo/Daniel Burke)

Showcasing Excellence

The symposium’s second day carried the greatest concentration of scientific content. FY25 pilot awardees presented mini-keynotes spanning a range of research areas, including the role of Epstein-Barr virus in multiple sclerosis, enzyme therapeutics derived from rare disease research, novel microbial short-chain fatty acid conjugates with systemic immune activity, and in vivo generation of anti-CD19 CAR-T cells for the treatment of lupus in mouse models. The FY26 cohort followed with flash talks presenting preliminary findings and scientific goals for their newly awarded projects.

The day’s central event was the formal welcome of Mount Sinai as the Consortium’s fifth center. Shruti Naik, Director of the Mount Sinai Colton Center, presented the center’s scientific focus and its alignment with the network’s existing research priorities, with accompanying talks on live microbial therapeutics and translational methodology grounding the announcement in substantive scientific context.

Shruti Naik, PhD, showcasing Mount Sinai’s scientific focus and research capabilities of the newly formed fifth Colton Center for Autoimmunity. (Photo/Daniel Burke)

The afternoon session addressed private-sector engagement, featuring a panel discussion with Luke Evnin, PhD (Vie Ventures), Andrea van Elsas, PhD (Third Rock Ventures), and Emily Roberts, PhD (Flagship Pioneering) and moderated by Joseph Craft, MD, Director of the Yale Colton Center, on the commercial landscape in autoimmunity followed by pitch presentations from Consortium members on advanced research programs, including nuclear-penetrating antibody therapeutics and AI-based pathology analysis. These sessions reflect the Consortium’s continued emphasis on translational application as a complement to discovery research.

Forward Momentum

The symposium’s final day opened with a keynote from Andrew Chan, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President of Research-Biology at Genentech, Inc (GNE), tracing the development of B-cell therapies from rituximab toward the prospect of curative treatment, offering a counterpoint to the systems-level framing established in the opening keynote. The announcement of the Cross-Consortium RFA winners provided attendees with an exciting look at newly funded collaborative projects, while a subsequent session addressed computational and AI-based approaches across immune health data infrastructure, disease prediction modeling, and protein folding analysis.

The symposium concluded with remarks from E. John Wherry, PhD, Director of the Colton Consortium, on the Consortium’s outlook toward 2027, preceded by a session dedicated to community-building across the network. This session underscored a recurring institutional priority: that a Consortium spanning five institutions and two continents requires deliberate, ongoing effort to function as a unified entity rather than a set of independently operating centers.

Colton Consortium Director, E. John Wherry, PhD, emphasizing that advancing autoimmune research will require scientific rigor, meaningful collaboration, and a shared commitment to improving patients’ lives. (Photo/Daniel Burke)

Looking Ahead

The addition of Mount Sinai represents a significant expansion of the Consortium’s scope. Considered alongside the symposium’s broader proceedings — center updates, pilot research, industry engagement, and community-building initiatives — this expansion reflects the Consortium’s founding principle: that autoimmune disease research advances most effectively without disciplinary or institutional silos, and that depth of inquiry, rather than diffusion of effort, is what will yield meaningful therapeutic progress.

Researchers, clinicians, and partners from across the globe gathered in New York City for the 2026 Colton Consortium Symposium—four days of collaboration, discovery, and advancing precision immunology. (Photo/Daniel Burke)

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