Lecture 1 - Introduction

Question 1

what is an innate response?

Answer 1

immediate response, includes barrier protection of the skin and mucosal surfaces

Question 2

what cells are important in the innate immune response?

Answer 2

NK cells, macrophages, neutrophils, mast cells

Question 3

how is the inflammatory response brought about?

Answer 3

bacteria come into contact with granular cell, cytokine released which increases blood flow

Question 4

what IL is the innate immune system mediated by?

Answer 4

IL1 and IL8

Question 5

what are the 3 stages of adaptive immunity?

Answer 5

recognition, activation and response

Question 6

what are the stages initiated by a T cell?

Answer 6

can activate Tk cells or Tc cells, or activate B cells

Question 7

what things make an antigen the most immunogenic?

Answer 7

chemical complexity, the size of the antigen and hetropolymers

Question 8

what is an autologous antigen?

Answer 8

self antigens with no immune response

Question 9

what is an allogenic antigen?

Answer 9

from same species and may cause a reaction

Question 10

what does a B cell start of as?

Answer 10

a haemopoietic stem cell

Question 11

how is tolerance against self antigens caused?

Answer 11

in the early stages of B cell maturation, when a B cell comes into contact with a self antigen it causes the cell to die

Question 12

how does B cells bring about an immune response?

Answer 12

binding of a foreign antigen followed by IL1 causes attraction of helper T cell, IL2 then stimulates cell division of Th cell

Question 13

where do T cells come from?

Answer 13

as a precursor in the bone marrow

Question 14

what is different about combating pathogens with T cells as opposed to B cells?

Answer 14

T cells deals with pathogens which are hiding within own cells

Question 15

what are the stages of T cell development?

Answer 15

travel to the thymus and become CD8+4 positive, can then split and divide, split again in the lymph node to become Th or Tc cell

Question 16

what receptors does a Th cell have?

Answer 16

CD4 and T cell receptor and is MHCII class

Question 17

what receptors does a Tc cell have?

Answer 17

CD8 and T cell receptor, MHCI class

Question 18

what receptors does a Treg cell have?

Answer 18

CD4 and CD25 as well as a T cell receptor

Question 19

what cells are involved in autoimmunity?

Answer 19

B cells

Question 20

what is the main role of T cells?

Answer 20

regulation of antibody response

Question 21

what is the difference between attenuated and inactivated virus?

Answer 21

attenuated is a mutant of the virus that is unable to cause the disease, inactivated is a physical inactivation of the virus using chemicals or hear

Question 22

what type of vaccine is able to enter the human cell?

Answer 22

attenuated virus

Question 23

what is the issue with antibody driven vaccines?

Answer 23

no involvement of T cells and so no immunological memory created

Question 24

why does an attenuated vaccine produce a strong immune response?

Answer 24

all of the epitopes of the virus are exposed

Question 25

what is an issue with attenuated vaccines?

Answer 25

less stable than inactivated and can revert to virulent form

Question 26

what are the negatives of inactivated viruses?

Answer 26

requires multiple boosters due to weaker immune response, this is due to being a mainly humeral immune response

Question 27

what is a purified macromolecule vaccine?

Answer 27

use a piece of the virus or bacteria which has been purified and used as the antigen

Question 28

how is a purified macromolecule vaccine created?

Answer 28

antigen producing gene is inserted into a bacterial plasmid which is then used to create a recombinant cell

Question 29

what is the disadvantage to purified vaccines?

Answer 29

poorly immunogenic and require multiple doses to be fully protected, expensive and mainly humoral immunity

Question 30

how do DNA vaccines work?

Answer 30

use a gene sequence of the antigen of the virus you want to protect against, and connect this to a cell in the body

Question 31

how can a DNA vaccine be modified so that the type of immune response can be chosen?

Answer 31

if the gene sequence also codes for specific IL's, this will mean that the type of cytokines that the cell will produce can be determined to determine the immune response

Question 32

how can vaccine efficacy be improved?

Answer 32

add adjuvants such as toxins that flag this up to the immune system to activate the immune response