In 2012, Nature Reviews Immunology organized a conference that brought together scientists and clinicians from both academia and industry to discuss one of the most pressing questions in medicine — how do we turn off rampant, undesirable inflammation? There is a growing appreciation that, similarly to the initiation of inflammation, the resolution of inflammation is an intricate and active process. Can we therefore harness the mediators involved in resolution responses to treat patients with chronic inflammatory or autoimmune diseases? Here, we ask five of the speakers from the conference to share their thoughts on this emerging field.