“Did you get your flu shot?” If your friends are anything like mine, you heard this question at least a dozen times before Thanksgiving. You probably got your fair share of disdainful looks too, if you answered “No.” But why are we worried about getting the flu shot now and not in May? Why is there a flu season at all? After all, what does … Continue reading The Reason for the Season: why flu strikes in winter
The human gut is host to 100 trillion bacteria. To put this number into perspective, bacteria outnumber our cells by more than 10 to 1. These microbial tenants, however, are not just free loaders taking advantage of our generosity. In fact, the majority of beneficial bacteria (“symbionts”) have undergone a rapid period of evolutionary change likely benefitting not only themselves but also their hosts. For … Continue reading Keeping the peace: Bacteria and immune responses in the human gut
Click here for more information from Seeding Labs’ website, and click here to register. More about Seeding Labs: Seeding Labs invests in exceptional scientists in developing countries who have limited resources, but limitless potential. They provide reduced-cost lab equipment and training and foster professional networks in order to enhance higher education, support vital research and create a more connected global scientific community. Seeding Labs has … Continue reading African Innovators: Scientists from the continent speak about their work changing the world
Presented by Jernej Godec, Ezana Demissie, and Vikram Juneja The immune system has evolved to recognize foreign invaders into our bodies, such as bacteria and viruses. In a similar fashion, it is able to recognize when healthy cells transform into cancer cells, and attempts to clear them. When patients come to the clinic with a tumor, the immune system has failed at this job, often … Continue reading The (Internal) War on Cancer: Using the immune system to fight tumors
Let’s consider a virus like Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). If we want to study it in a lab setting, we need an animal model, that is a living entity that we can infect and observe for a certain period of time. We cannot infect humans for obvious reasons. Monkeys and chimpanzees are expensive, and research on them subject to increasingly strict ethical guidelines. And the … Continue reading Part mouse, Part human
There’s been a lot of buzz recently about cancer immunotherapy, including its selection as Science Magazine’s 2013 Breakthrough of the Year. Immunotherapy has introduced a new class of drugs that harness your immune system’s ability to fight off cancer cells. While traditional cancer drugs act by directly attacking cancer cells, immunotherapies instead stimulate your immune cells to kill the cancer themselves. Immunotherapy has been gaining … Continue reading Blocking the Brakes: Helping Your Immune System Battle Cancer
Presented by Chris Garris Did you know that the average human gut is home to over 100 trillion microorganisms? These numbers are not from a diseased state, but rather are representative of a normal, healthy human gut. Clearly, this suggests that the vast majority of microorganisms living within us are not pathogenic. Animal studies of germ-free or selective gut colonization by microbes provide growing evidence … Continue reading In the Loop with Poop: Intestinal microbes in health and immunity
Presented by Laura Klein Many of us are familiar with milk as a food in our supermarket aisles, whether as a beverage that pairs well with cookies, or as the starting ingredient for cheese and yogurt. But milk is also part of what makes us mammals, a class of animals that produces milk as the first food for our young. Our lecture will begin with … Continue reading More Than Food: Exploring human milk as medicine
Food allergies are a growing problem around the world []. These days, if you do not personally suffer from an allergy, you almost certainly know someone who does. Currently, around 3-7% of children have a food allergy—about a 50% increase since 1997 [1, 2]. For many people, allergies are little more than a nuisance, but for others, an allergic reaction can be life threatening. What … Continue reading When Good Immune Systems Go Bad
Vaccines teach your immune system to recognize and destroy certain pathogens. Unfortunately, it can be tricky to get your immune system to recognize and mount attacks against some pathogens, like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Researchers recently used computational modeling to design a tiny protein that kind of looks like part of an RSV protein. When they injected it into monkeys, many of the monkeys’ immune … Continue reading Can computer simulations help design new vaccines?