Welcome Note

Dear colleagues and friends,

We had the privilege to announce the 18th International Pathogenic Neisseria Conference, which was held in Würzburg, Germany. You have certainly appreciated staying in this picturesque, yet vibrant University town in Northern Bavaria, which is located at the river Main and offers many opportunities to enjoy culture, architecture and countryside.

The bi-annual IPNC conferences are outstanding events in the field of Neisseria research. In 2012, the IPNC was even more than ever stimulated by major progress in the fields of vaccine and genome research.

The conference brought together epidemiologists, cellular microbiologists, genome experts, infectious disease specialists, to name only a few specialties. It is this diversity of interests focusing on the biology of one bacterial genus that makes the IPNC so valuable and so vital for now more than 30 years. We have done our best to provide a good environment for a thoroughly interactive IPNC conference.

We invited all senior scientists, postdocs and students working in the field to attend the conference and participate in an inter-disciplinary discussion of latest developments.

We are indebted to all members of the scientific board for their enthusiasm to select the best contributions for presentation.

Thank you very much for this successful meeting in Würzburg,


Prof. Dr. med. Matthias Frosch

Prof. Dr. Thomas Rudel

Prof. Dr. Ulrich Vogel