1. Passive Barriers and Innate Immunity

About this Lecture

Lecture

In the first mini-lecture, we begin to look at how the body fights off disease by looking at the passive barriers that protect us. What do they look like? You may or not already be familiar with some of these barriers, such as the skin, but in addition to that we also discuss the barriers in the eyes, airways and gut that prevent infections from forming. We then introduce the innate immune system, define its main characteristics, distinguish it from the passive barriers that protect us, and then begin to describe some of its components.

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.