Lecture

Sex differences in immunity: Part I

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In course

BIO-373: Genetics and genomics

The theoretical part of this course covers classical genetics and contemporary genomics. Because bioinformatics has become important for genomic research, the course also includes practical applications to genomic analyses using Python, including group pro ...

Description

This lecture explores the sex differences in immunity, focusing on the biological mechanisms, genomics of healthy immune response, and clinical consequences. It covers topics such as immune cell counts, genetic variants, immune responses in different species, autoimmune diseases, and cancer risks. The discussion also includes the impact of age and sex on IgG levels, X and Y chromosomes, and the role of hormones in immune responses.

Instructors (2)

Bart Deplancke

Bart Deplancke graduated as a Biochemical Engineer at Ghent University (Belgium, 1998) after which he pursued doctoral studies in Immunobiology at the University of Illinois (USA) and postdoctoral work in regulatory genomics at the Harvard and UMass Medical Schools (USA). In 2007, he established his lab at the EPFL School of Life Sciences where he is now a Full Professor and former Vice-Dean of Innovation. There, he is developing new, often single cell-related technologies to study how the genome mediates c

Jacques Fellay

Jacques Fellay is a medical scientist with expertise in infectious diseases and human genomics. He obtained his MD from the University of Lausanne in 2002 and his PhD from University of Utrecht. After a clinical training in infectious diseases in Switzerland and a 4-years postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University, he joined the EPFL in April 2011 with an SNF Professorship. On top of his EPFL affiliation, Jacques is also Head of Precision Medicine at the University Hospital (CHUV) in Lausanne, Group Leader at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, and Co-director of the Health2030 Genome Center at Campus Biotech in Geneva.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Health sciences

Immunology: Immune system

Related concepts (32)

Immune system

The immune system is a network of biological processes that protects an organism from diseases. It detects and responds to a wide variety of pathogens, from viruses to parasitic worms, as well as cancer cells and objects such as wood splinters, distinguishing them from the organism's own healthy tissue. Many species have two major subsystems of the immune system. The innate immune system provides a preconfigured response to broad groups of situations and stimuli.

Adaptive immune system

The adaptive immune system, also known as the acquired immune system, or specific immune system is a subsystem of the immune system that is composed of specialized, systemic cells and processes that eliminate pathogens or prevent their growth. The acquired immune system is one of the two main immunity strategies found in vertebrates (the other being the innate immune system). Like the innate system, the adaptive immune system includes both humoral immunity components and cell-mediated immunity components and destroys invading pathogens.

Innate immune system

The innate, or nonspecific, immune system is one of the two main immunity strategies (the other being the adaptive immune system) in vertebrates. The innate immune system is an alternate defense strategy and is the dominant immune system response found in plants, fungi, insects, and primitive multicellular organisms (see Beyond vertebrates).

Immune response

An immune response is a physiological reaction which occurs within an organism in the context of inflammation for the purpose of defending against exogenous factors. These include a wide variety of different toxins, viruses, intra- and extracellular bacteria, protozoa, helminths, and fungi which could cause serious problems to the health of the host organism if not cleared from the body. In addition, there are other forms of immune response.

Cell-mediated immunity

Cell-mediated immunity or cellular immunity is an immune response that does not involve antibodies. Rather, cell-mediated immunity is the activation of phagocytes, antigen-specific cytotoxic T-lymphocytes, and the release of various cytokines in response to an antigen. In the late 19th century Hippocratic tradition medicine system, the immune system was imagined into two branches: humoral immunity, for which the protective function of immunization could be found in the humor (cell-free bodily fluid or serum) and cellular immunity, for which the protective function of immunization was associated with cells.

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