Microbiome symbiosis, host-pathogen dynamics, and the search for new therapeutics: highlights from the Theobald Smith Society Spring 2026 Symposium

The annual Theobald Smith Society (TSS) spring meeting was convened at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on 8 May 2026. TSS is the New Jersey branch of ASM and holds two annual meetings, in the fall and spring. These meetings bring together microbiologists, trainees at all levels, and professionals from both academia and industry to share their research, to network, and to engage in discussions on a wide array of topics that fall under ASM's three main units: health, mechanism discovery, and applied and environmental microbiology. The TSS spring meeting brought together more than 140 attendees from institutions across New Jersey. This report highlights the vision and work of TSS and ASM, the breadth of research presented at the meeting through invited talks and posters, and the two keynote lectures on nutritional immunity and the modern decline of human microbiome diversity.