2. Adaptive Immunity

About this Lecture

Lecture

In the second mini-lecture, we move on from the innate immune system and discuss the adaptive immune system. This mini-lecture establishes how it is able to recognise individual pathogens and antigens, and develop an immune response to remove it from the body. We then define the term ‘antigen’, using examples from nature to contextualise the definition. The body has various ways to detect antigens, and in this lecture we explain how the immune response is triggered by MHC-II, a protein found on the surface of antigen-presenting cells (APCs).

Course

In this lecture, Dr Matthew Ivory (Cardiff University) introduces the human immune system, and some of the tools the body has at its disposal to fight off infections. To begin, we: (i) discuss the passive barriers and innate immune system; before (ii) focusing on the adaptive immune system and how its response differs from the innate immune system; and then delving into T- and B-cells, specifically cytotoxic and helper T-cells, and antibodies and their associated B-cells; following onto (iv) antibodies more specifically and understanding how they have such specificity for an antigen and the different mechanisms they can use to fight pathogens; before finally (v) understanding how monoclonal antibodies have widespread use in medicine and in science, such as in diagnosis, cell signalling, radiolabelling, ELISA tests, and immunofluorescence.

Lecturer

Dr Matthew Ivory is a Lecturer at Cardiff University in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (2016-present). His key expertise is in ex vivo human skin organ culture and histology, human skin immune cell extraction and culture, flow cytometry and pharmaceutical formulation, and his research interests are in the delivery of vaccines and therapeutics into the skin. In addition to this, he is also a qualified pharmacist.