201 Immunology: goals Goal - to provide you with an overview of key concepts in immunology: –innate and adaptive immune responses –cells and molecules.

201 Immunology: goals

• Goal - to provide you with an overview of key concepts in immunology:

– innate and adaptive immune responses– cells and molecules involved in immune responses– interactions that result in the recognition of microbes by the immune

system– immune effector responses– regulation of immune responses– specific mechanisms involved in immune responses to viruses,

bacteria, and cancer cells

• Organizer: Otoniel (Otto) Martínez ([email protected])

201 Immunology: faculty

• Instructors:– Otto Martínez, PhD– Larry Feldman, PhD– David Blanco, PhD (laboratory)

• Clinical Conference Speakers:– Gary Schiller, MD– Michael Cecka, PhD– Ardis Moe, MD– Adrian Casillas, MD

201 Immunology: overall structure

• Introduction to immunology concepts– 3 lectures (Martínez)

• Molecules and cells that interact with antigens– 3 lectures (Feldman)

• Development and regulation of the immune system– 3 lectures (Martínez)

• Immune responses to cancer, viruses, bacteria– 3 lectures (Martínez and Feldman)

• Clinical conferences and immunology laboratory

201 Immunology: clinical conferences

• Bone marrow transplantation (BMT)– August 16, Friday (Schiller)

• Allergy– August 19, Monday (Casillas)

• AIDS– August 26, Monday (Moe)

• Immunology laboratory– September 9, Monday (Blanco)

• Major histocompatibility complex (MHC)– September 23, Monday (Cecka)

201 Immunology: reference books

• The Immune System(Peter Parham)

• Immunobiology(Janeway, Travers, Walport, Shlomchik)

• Other textbooks:– Abbas, Roitt

• www sources: PubMed– http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=Books– Immunobiology, 5th edition in searchable format

Introduction: role of the immune system in host defense

• The immune system has evolved to protect us from pathogens that are present in our environment (viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and multicellular parasites).

Introduction: role of the immune system in host defense

• Immunity has evolved to protect us from pathogens that are present in our environment (viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and multicellular parasites).

• Therefore, the immune system is of interest because it plays a key role in protection from infection.

• Immune responses that result in the control or elimination of infection are termed protective immunity.

While immunology is a relatively new science, an intuitive understanding if immunity has been around for some time:

– immunity evolves from the latin word inmunis, which was derived from in (free or exempt from, without) and munus (civil services or taxation)

– first recorded mention of the phenomenon of immunity (in European history) is by Thucydides (460-404 BC, Athens), who described the great pestilence of 430-429 BC in Athens, during the second year of the Peloponnesian War, an outbreak that killed more than 30,000 people (out of a population of 172,000)

– Thucydides noted that those who had recovered would not contract the disease a second time: “the sick and the dying were tended by the pitying care of those who had recovered, because they knew the course of the disease and were themselves free from apprehensions ... for no one was ever attacked a second time, or not with a fatal result”

Deliberate attempts to induce immunity (15th century) to smallpox: variolation

Understanding that prior exposure to an infectious agent can result in protection on subsequent exposure to that same agent led to the development of vaccination.

– Edward Jenner - developed an effective vaccine to smallpox, using a similar virus, cowpox virus (vaccine is derived from thelatin word vaca)

Many effective vaccines have been developed based on an empirical understanding of immune responses.

However, a thorough, mechanistic understanding of immune responses has been developed only in recent years.

SSPE = subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (brain disease that is a late consequence of measles in a small fraction of patients)

The cells that make up the immune system interact to recognize, then respond to, pathogens.

Therefore, immune responses can be divided into two related activities: recognition and response.

• In addition to this, several features of immune responses, such as memory and specificity, have captivated the interest of biologists for many years.

• In the last half of this century, significant insights on how the immune system can recognize and respond to infectious agents vigorously and with such great specificity.

• It is clear that the immune system can act as an integrative system, analogous to the endocrine or nervous systems, in that it can receive information from the local and systemic environment, assess and integrate this information in some way, and respond appropriately with a series of effector functions, which result in significant biological changes.

Physical Barriers to Pathogens

• Before considering innate and adaptive immune mechanisms, it is worth noting that there are various non-immune, natural physical barriers prevent entry and/or the establishment of pathogens:– skin– mucus– tears (lysozyme)– ciliated epithelial cells– low pH in the GI tract

Physical Barriers to Pathogens

• Before considering innate and adaptive immune mechanisms, it is worth noting that there are various non-immune, natural physical barriers prevent entry and/or the establishment of pathogens:– skin– mucus– tears (lysozyme)– ciliated epithelial cells– low pH in the GI tract

• These physical barriers are of great importance in protecting the host from infection, providing effective barriers that can be penetrated by few infectious agents.