This symposium will build on the first meeting which took place in 2016. Microbiologists and immunologists will again come together to provide different viewpoints on the same problems in joint sessions. While maintaining continuity in topics, the meeting concept will be evolved by introducing novel sessions on bacterial defenses against innate immunity, an area prominently covered by abstract submissions in the 2016 meeting, and on fungus host interactions, an under-researched area of great medical importance.