A box of grapefruits arrived today in their pinkest glory, all the way from Texas. The first snowflakes also arrived, and as I write this, I can see them sparkling in the streetlights outside. It is dark and it is cold, but I feel fortunate to live in a world so full of contrasts – grapefruit and snowflakes, hot and cold, rich and poor, strong and weak, healthy and sick, right and wrong.

We pick a careful path between opposites in the course of our lives, trying ever so hard to avoid Scylla and Charybdis, and yet, it is those extremes that make our experience so rich.

Would we love with all our heart if we had not known despair? Would we treasure health if we had not known illness? Would we yearn to help the sick, and the poor, if we did not have the comfort of a heated house in the cold of winter, with our loved ones nearby?

On this darkest night of the year, I wish you the pinkest of grapefruits, and light, clarity, and generosity of spirit in 2011.

Annie

P.S., I’ll be providing updates on our work at the following conferences – hope to see you there!


Invited Speaker. Regulating Immune Response in Biologics – A Paradigm- Shifting Solution. Session: Immunogenicity Issues. 2nd Annual Advancing Biologics from the Lab to the Clinic, Amsterdam, Netherlands. January 25-26, 2011 https://www.nextlevelpharma.com/events/view/advancing_biologics_from_the_lab_to_the_clinic_eu_10

Invited Workshop Leader. Controlling Immunogenicity: Tools to Predict and Reduce. Antibody Engineering & Design, Frankfurt, Germany. February 24-26, 2011 https://www.hansonwade.com/events/antibody-engineering-and-design-2011/

Invited Panelist. 11th World Vaccine Congress Washington 2011, Washington, DC. April 11-14, 201. https://www.terrapinn.com/conference/world-vaccine-congress-washington/

Tregitopes and Tolerance: Determinants and Correlates of Immunogenicity. University of Rhode Island Institute for Immunology and Informatics (conference not posted yet). May 9-11, 2010. Providence Rhode Island. https://www.immunome.org/Events/

Invited Speaker. Immuno-informatics to Develop Novel Epitope Vaccines Against Bacterial Pathogens. 9th Annual ISF Colloquium on: The Systems Biology of Sepsis, Genomics and Beyond, New York, NY. June 22, 2011 https://www.sepsisforum.org/colloquium.php