Disease and Prions

About the lecture

In the first mini-lecture, we introduce communicable diseases by first giving a definition for disease itself. How does disease differ from injury, especially when disease can be symptomless, cause major life-changing symptoms or even cause death? Disease, such as ischaemic heart disease, COPD, and lung cancers make up some of the leading causes of death in humans, according to WHO. Communicable diseases can be transferred between subjects through a number of different means, and in this lecture we investigate some of those ways. We introduce some of the different types of organisms that can cause disease, such as bacteria, protists, viruses and parasites, before also discussing the impact of prions, particularly in the brain.

About the 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.