Immunity

COVID-19 Blog Series: Part 3

Blog part 3: Treatments  Fighting back- As COVID-19 vaccine development and roll-out to the UK public occurs at a rapid pace. Questions now turn to how we are going to treat those currently suffering from COVID-19, and how can we limit spread of the disease in the future. In this blog we are focussing on how our treatment of pandemics has evolved over time. By looking back at lessons learned from past key pandemics, we can appreciate how we are now able to respond rapidly to COVID-19 through the development or novel treatments for COVID-19 including monoclonal antibodies to treat hospitalised patients and novel antiviral drugs that in the future, we could administer at home during the early stages of disease.   PAST Throughout the course of… Read More »COVID-19 Blog Series: Part 3

COVID-19 Blog Series: Part 2

Blog part 2: Fighting back: Training our immune system with vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 Disclaimer: This blog is for information purposes only – please consult a medical professional for advice if you are concerned about COVID-19 or vaccine suitability.  In the last blog we saw how our immune system can fight back against SARS-CoV-2. But for some people this will mean getting unwell during their initial infection, and as we know, COVID-19 can be fatal especially in at-risk groups. So, what we want is to teach our immune system to recognise SARS-CoV-2, by inducing immune memory – to protect us from future disease or infection but without risking illness. Well, we… Read More »COVID-19 Blog Series: Part 2

LIVE Talk | This Wormy World: Parasites – Friend or Foe? | 18:30 (UK time), 16 March 2021.

LIVE streaming at YouTube 18:30 (UK time), 16 March 2021. Summary: My research interests are in immunity to infection, especially infections by large multi-cellular parasitic worms. I will concentrate on our studies of whipworm infection. This is a type of parasitic worm that infects humans (about 1 in 15 people) although different types of whipworms also infect multiple types of animal. I will discuss our discoveries on how infection establishes and how the immune system works to control it. More importantly perhaps, I will describe how the parasite avoids being controlled by the immune system and how this information may… Read More »LIVE Talk | This Wormy World: Parasites – Friend or Foe? | 18:30 (UK time), 16 March 2021.