Kenneth L. Rock, M.D.

Keynote Title: Innate immune sensing of necrotic cell death

Kenneth L. Rock, M.D. is Professor and Chair of Pathology at UMass Chan Medical School. He is an authority in the areas of immune surveillance and antigen presentation. He has played a leading role in elucidating the pathways by which antigenic peptides are generated for presentation on MHC molecules. His discoveries include the identification of the cellular and molecular basis for cross presentation, the key role of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway in MHC I-antigen presentation, and ERAP1 plus other post-proteasomal trimming steps that help create or destroy MHC I-presented peptides. He also defined the underlying mechanisms of antigen presentation in T-B cell interactions. In other studies, he helped elucidate how cell death and danger signals influence immune responses. These processes underlie the generation of both adaptive immune responses and innate sterile inflammation, the latter of which underlies the pathogenesis of several diseases, such as gout. His discoveries in this area established the molecular identity of the first endogenous danger signal (MSU) and a key common pathway, involving IL-1 and inflammasomes, through which many structurally distinct stimuli cause sterile inflammation. Dr. Rock is an ISI highly cited researcher and has published >200 papers with an H-index of 78. His top primary papers in antigen presentation and sterile inflammation have each been cited >3,000 times. He has served on numerous national committees and editorial boards. He has also founded two biotechnology companies.