Recently, Xinxiu Lin (supervised by Prof. Aihua Liao), a PhD student from the Reproductive Immunity Team at the Institute of Reproductive Health, was invited to attend “the 43^rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Immunology (ASRI)” in Houston, USA. She made an oral presentation entitled “Blimp-1: newly discovered roles in regulating decidual Tim-3+Tregs differentiation and function during early pregnancy”, and received the 2024 TRAVEL Awards.

The theme for this years’ meeting is “Mission Control: Beyond the Final Frontiers in Reproductive Immunology”. This meeting gathered nearly 300 scholars and physicians from 18 countries engaged in basic and clinical researched in the field of reproductive immunology. This meeting covered 14 topics, including sex differences in reproductive tract immunity, fetal immune system development and microchimerism, cervicovaginal microenvironment, adaptive immunity in the reproductive tract, and pre-eclampsia: mechanisms and therapeutics, etc.

During the poster session, Lin presented the team's latest research work, and attracted a lot of attendances for discussions. The title of her poster is “Interleukin-10: A novel metabolic regulator of decidual macrophage differentiation via oxidative phosphorylation-implications for pregnancy", which was selected as one of the Top Finalists in the “Poster Competition”. It is reported that 166 posters were received and only 19 were shortlisted for the competition.

The ASRI, founded in 1981, is one of the world's most influential academic conference on reproductive immunology. The Reproductive Immunology Team at the Institute of Reproductive Health has long been focusing on clinical, basic and translational researched on the immunological-related pregnancy complications, with the main theme of “Pregnancy and Immunity”. In this meeting, the team presented its latest research outcomes in various ways, which were widely recognized and praised by the international counterparts, making the voice of “HUST” and further enhancing the international influence. For a long time, the Institute of Reproduction Health attaches great importance to the cultivation of international vision and ability of their students, and actively supports and encourages them to participate in the important international academic meetings, so as to make a positive contribution to the cultivation of top innovative talents for the “Double First-Class Initiative” of our university. (Reported by Chunyan Liu)