Immune response to infection

Published on October 31, 2024   34 min

A selection of talks on Immunology & Inflammation

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0:00
Hello! Welcome to this talk on the immune response to infection. My name is Prof. Tom Monie and I'm a Professor of Pure and Applied Biomedical Science. I work at Christ's College as part of the University of Cambridge.
0:17
During this talk, I'm going to look at how the body responds to infections and I'm going to focus particularly on those responses to viral infection, bacterial infection, and parasitic infection. We'll look at how the innate response works and we'll look at how the adaptive response works, bringing in examples from those different types of infections as we go through. Thinking about what it means in terms of the impact and the potential damage to the tissues within our bodies.
0:48
The immune response can be split into two separate parts. The innate immune response and the adaptive immune response. Essentially, together they keep us alive. They act as a defensive barrier. They allow us to detect threats. Those might be from pathogens or they might be internal threats from parts of our own bodies. They also enable pathogens to be killed so that infections can be stopped and that we don't become unwell. They act as a sensor for damage. They can tell when parts of our body are working correctly and when things are going wrong, that might need to be repaired. One of the impacts of the immune response is the induction of a process called inflammation. This is quite a natural response but it's something that often contributes to the symptoms of a disease or an infection. One thing to be really aware of is that these two parts of the immune system, the innate and the adaptive, have to work together. If our innate immune system isn't functioning properly, then we won't get a proper activation of our adaptive system. Broadly speaking, when you look at

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