Course Information 2023-2024
Welcome to the final year of your programme. One of the aims of the final year is to prepare you for the years ahead. The teaching will be structured differently, and you will be encouraged to work independently. We expect you to develop a breadth to your thinking and writing. This is the time to bring together knowledge gained during the past three years, looking for general principles which can be used productively. This mature approach should be expressed in your coursework, project report and examination answers. The key to success in final year is good time-management.
We recommend that you read this Course Information Document at the start of your final year.
In addition, there is important information about regulations, assessment and progression in the Life Sciences Handbook: Regulations & Advice; again, you should read this document at the start of the year and you must refer to it as necessary.
Please keep this Course Information Document for future reference after you graduate; you may need to provide course details for further study or other training.
While the information contained in the document is correct at the time of printing, it may be necessary to make changes. Check your online timetable, Moodle and your email messages regularly.
Professor Pasquale Maffia, Pasquale.Mafia@glasgow.ac.uk
Deputy: Professor Rob Nibbs, Robert.Nibbs@glasgow.ac.uk
Professor Simon Milling, Simon.Milling@glasgow.ac.uk
Teaching staff names can be found on your online timetable and contact details can be found on the University website Staff A-Z
Dr Janine Coombes, Robert Gordon University
The Life Sciences Office is located in Room 354 of the Sir James Black Building. Opening hours for enquiries are: Monday to Friday: 9:30am to 4:30pm.
Course Code
BIOL4186
Course Title
Immunological Basis of Inflammatory Disease 4D option
Academic Session
2023-24
Short Description of the Course
This course focuses on the mechanisms and/or treatment of common autoimmune diseases and other immunopathologies, such as rheumatoid arthritis, asthma, atherosclerosis, cancer etc.
Requirements of Entry
Normally, only available to final-year Life Sciences students Infection & Immunology or Biomolecular Sciences programme. Visiting students may be allowed to enrol, at the discretion of the Life Sciences Chief Adviser and the Course Coordinator.
Associated Programmes
This course is offered by the Immunology programme.
Available to visiting students
Yes
Available to Erasmus students
Yes
Typically offered
Semester 2
Timetable
This option is assigned to block S2-D. Normally, there is 3 hours of teaching on Fridays, which may be split over more than one session.
Course Aims
The aims of this course are to develop:
a detailed understanding of the immunology of a variety of immune-mediated diseases;
an understanding of how the immune system is used to develop novel therapies for immune-mediated diseases;
understanding of current controversies and emerging questions in autoimmunity and immunopathology.
Intended Learning Outcomes of Course
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
evaluate the role of immune responses and inflammation in cancer and heart disease;
evaluate our current understanding of the immune mechanisms underpinning autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, etc;
discuss the molecular and cellular basis for allergic responses;
discuss how molecular and cellular therapies have been applied in the treatment of autoimmunity and other diseases.
Minimum Requirements for Award of Credits
Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course’s summative assessment.
Description of Summative Assessment
The course will be assessed by a 2-hour examination (70%) and in-course assessment consisting of a review article (30%).
Are reassessment opportunities normally available for all summative assessments in this course
Not applicable for Honours courses
Formative Assessment and Feedback
During the course, students will be expected to write an essay under examination-like conditions. Essays will be discussed, and verbal generic feedback and written individual feedback will be provided by staff.
A tutor will be assigned to the students for their review article. The tutor could provide advice on two occasions during the preparation work.
The last synoptic session is designed to be primarily ‘student-led’, and an opportunity for the student to ask, and answer, questions on the topics covered, which will help prepare the students for the examination.
Examination Diet
April/May
Total Exam Duration
120 minutes
Teaching Staff
|
|
School |
Building/ Location |
Phone |
Email address |
|
Prof Pasquale Maffia |
Infection & Immunity |
Level 5, Sir Graeme David building |
7142 |
|
|
Prof Fulvio D’Acquisto |
University of Roehampton |
N/A |
N/A |
|
|
Dr Charles McSharry |
School of Medicine |
Level 4, Sir Graeme David building |
2282 |
|
|
Prof Neil Basu |
Infection & Immunity |
Level 3, Sir Graeme David building |
1718 |
Neil.Basu@glasgow.ac.uk |
|
Prof Jonathan Cavanagh |
Infection & Immunity |
Level 3, Sir Graeme David building |
7769 |
Jonathan.Cavanagh@glasgow.ac.uk |
|
Dr Alasdair Fraser |
Infection & Immunity |
Level 3, Sir Graeme David building |
N/A |
|
|
Prof Simon Milling |
Infection & Immunity |
Level 4, Sir Graeme David building |
6419 |
|
|
Dr Daniel Gaya |
NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde |
N/A |
N/A |
|
|
Prof Thomas Otto |
Infection & Immunity |
Level 5, Sir Graeme Davies Building |
4698 |
|
|
Dr Paola Di Meglio |
King’s College London |
N/A |
N/A |
|
|
Dr Aurelie Najm |
Infection & Immunity |
Level 4, Sir Graeme David building |
N/A |
|
|
Prof Mariola Kurowska-Stolarska |
Infection & Immunity |
Level 4, Sir Graeme David building |
6085 |
All 330-xxxx telephone numbers can be dialled directly from outside the University. If dialling from a University extension, dial the last 4 digits only. We aim to be friendly, helpful and accessible, so if you are finding things difficult, please do not hesitate to contact the Course Coordinator or another member of staff. The teaching staff are very keen to see successful results at the end of the year and should always be willing to help and advise students. However, please try to be patient - they are often very busy!
IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU ATTEND ALL TEACHING SESSIONS. THE TEACHING STAFF, THE COURSE COORDINATOR, AND THE UNIVERSITY EXPECT FULL ATTENDANCE. Regrettably, and because of problems in previous years, attendance may be monitored. If any problems arise, the Course Coordinator will respond accordingly. If for any reason you are unable to attend a session in this Option, you should, before the session where possible, inform Prof Maffia, and/or the member of staff taking that session.
Assessment Summary & Timetable
In-course assessment:
Review Article - 30% of the overall course grade.
Submit a draft of the Review to the supervisor by Friday 1 March 2024.
The completed version is to be submitted by 4 pm on Thursday 21 March 2024.
Submission of Course Work
All coursework should be submitted electronically to Moodle. Requests for late submission should be discussed with Prof Maffia or good cause should be submitted.
Penalties for Late Course Work Submission
Developing Essay Writing Skills
All Level-4 School of Life Sciences Options must now include a piece of written work as part of the curriculum. It is hoped that this will be a valuable formative exercise in independent working and help prepare you for writing exam essay answers in April/May. The work will be assessed and feedback given, but it does NOT form part of your summative assessment. In this Option, this will be done in Prof Maffia’s Essay Writing Exercise session. Further details are provided below.
Moodle and Email
The purpose of the review article is to give you an opportunity to write on an area of immunology that is of particular interest to you. This has to be on a topic different from your lab project, MSci lab placement, summer lab placement, or news and views article. The final version of the review article must be submitted electronically to Moodle by 4 pm on Thursday 21st March 2024.
The body text should be in 12 points normal Times New Roman. The entire document should be justified, 1.5 line-spaced, and should contain page numbers. The Review SHALL NOT exceed 2,500 words (excluding References, Figures, Figure Legends, and Tables). Marks will be deducted when Reviews are longer than this stipulated length. Keeping within the 2,500-word limit can be difficult. Where appropriate, it is sensible to condense information into Figures, with carefully constructed Legends. It is strongly advisable to draw your own Figures rather than take them from other publications. Other important advice and tips can be found below, and it is highly recommended that you read this section carefully.
Remember, someone has to read and mark your review article, so make sure it is well-written, attractively presented, and clear.
The grade for your Review Article constitutes 30% of your overall grade for Option D.
Choosing a Topic and Deciding on a Title
This is an important part of writing your review. You should go for a topic that interests you and you should convey your enthusiasm. The review title you use should not be too broad, such that you have too much information to cover, but should also not be too focussed, such that you are struggling to find enough literature to support a 2,500-word essay. To help with this process, a list of review topics will be circulated from which you can choose your five favourites. Your choices, in order of preference, should be sent to Prof Pasquale Maffia (Pasquale.Maffia@glasgow.ac.uk) by Friday 12th January 2024. Prof Maffia will then allocate you one of your selected topics and assign you to an advisor. To ensure that the advisor workload is spread equitably amongst the Immunology staff, it may not be possible for all students to get their first choice, although we will endeavour to ensure that each student gets one of their favourites. When necessary, Year 3 grades will be taken into account when assigning Review topics to students.
The Role of the Advisor
The advisor can provide advice on two occasions during the preparation of your Review.
Firstly, after you have been allocated a topic and an advisor, you should arrange to meet your advisor and discuss the topic. You are STRONGLY encouraged to do this by January 2024, and it would be sensible to draw up a bullet point plan for your Review. This plan is NOT summatively assessed, but you might want to discuss it with your advisor. Many students don’t fully appreciate the effort required to write the Review Article, and delays in starting to write often lead to late submissions, or submission of incomplete or unpolished essays. At this first meeting, your advisor will be able to help you decide on a focused title, advise on a plan of content for your Review, and may be able to recommend some reviews and research articles to get you started. It is anticipated that this first meeting should last no longer than one hour.
Secondly, when you have completed a draft version of your Review Article, you should send it to your advisor for him/her to look at. He/she will then provide feedback on what you have written. This may be done by email or at a face-to-face meeting that, again, should last no more than one hour. It is essential that you give your advisor a sufficient amount of time to provide effective feedback and remember that he/she is probably very busy. So it is highly recommended that you send your draft Review to the advisor around 3 weeks, or more, before the submission deadline (i.e. by 1st March 2024). Failure to do so might mean that you do not receive feedback in sufficient time to make changes to your Review. Once feedback has been given, the advisor’s role is complete. You might want to make some changes to the Review as a result of the feedback before submission, but it is not up to the advisor to check your changes.
Although the advisor is there to help, it is important to remember that the Review Article is an INDEPENDENT piece of work. Advisors are therefore strongly discouraged from providing any additional substantive help above and beyond that described above, although they should be the first point of contact if you are having major difficulties with your Review.
It should also be noted that you are under no obligation to meet, or communicate, with your advisor during the writing of your Review – they are there to provide help only if you want it.
Turnitin Review Check on Moodle
It is essential that the Review you submit is ALL YOUR OWN WORK. Your Review MUST be accompanied by a signed declaration in which you confirm that you have read and accepted the guidelines on plagiarism and that the work is original. A copy of this declaration can be found on Moodle. In addition, to avoid inadvertent plagiarism, you should submit your Review through the Turnitin Review Check which can be accessed via Moodle. You have two opportunities to do this, and the second submission must be the FINAL version of your Review that you submit for marking. Prof Maffia may also check the final electronic versions that you submit. If you have any doubts about plagiarism in your work, please contact Prof Maffia.
GENERAL ADVICE ON WRITING A REVIEW
The pointers below are for guidance. You will also receive some advice on writing in session 1. However, we do not encourage students to write essays according to a strict formula. Originality is an essential ingredient of an essay.
Essays are about ideas. A catalogue of facts is not an essay. Factual titles are simply asking what is interesting or controversial about a subject. The ideas should be ordered to develop a theme and proceed from an introduction through a logically ordered main body of discussion and analysis to a conclusion, which summarises the main points. The essay should be completed with a reference list in which the main sources are listed in a consistent, standard format. Plagiarism of text and figures is forbidden.
An HONOURS essay should not be hurriedly written the night before the submission date. Time should be devoted to collecting and organising information before planning the essay. Do not set about writing until the information and ideas have been ordered to obtain a clear picture of the course the essay will follow - leave enough time for writing up and checking.
Collecting and organising information. Learn how to use and search computer databases of the scientific literature. Examine the reference lists of recent relevant papers. Scan summaries of papers and reviews to decide whether it is worthwhile reading the whole article. Scan the indexes of books to decide which chapters are relevant. Make orderly notes of evidence and arguments and keep a list of all references used.
Make sure full details of each reference are recorded.
Planning the essay. Having completed the task of information collecting, note down in a single sentence the skeleton of each idea that might be used in the essay. Group together similar ideas and arrange them in logical succession. Decide upon the importance of each idea and roughly how many paragraphs might be devoted to it. Once the basic form of the essay is blocked out, try to find links to connect each set of paragraphs. Attempting to find link phrases leads naturally to the sequencing of ideas resulting in a better flow.
Introduce headings dividing up the essay where possible and if appropriate.
The introduction is extremely important because it is the first impression readers gain of the writer’s thoughts and determines to a large extent their attitude to the material before them. Examiners know from the introduction what the author regards as the major issues that will form the focus of the essay. Tell the reader what is going to be explained and discussed in the essay to prepare their minds for the way the subject matter will be approached. Arouse the reader’s interest by stating original thoughts on the subject while saving details for the body of the essay. If you focus on one aspect of a broad subject you must give an explanation. Ask important and relevant questions to be answered at a later stage. Be direct and to the point.
Draft the conclusion before the discussion in the body of the text. Several drafts may be necessary to enable you to see exactly what area should be covered in the body. Having the conclusion in mind will help keep the essay relevant to the title and reduce the number of re-drafts.
In the body of the essay present in detail the discussion and analysis needed to appropriately cover the contents of the title. The essay body will be the longest part of the essay because it is here that suggestions are made, and support appears for claims, arguments, and criticism. In a science essay, there should be a logical progression of ideas: new evidence; hypothesis; empirical testing; confirmation, and new questions. Avoid the following pitfalls:
i) Lack of attention to planning. Repetition of information/discussion. Ambiguity - failure to make clear the standpoint you are taking. Lack of logical order - forcing the reader to grope back and forth in an attempt to follow your argument. Lack of flow between paragraphs. Lack of relevance of information/ideas. Contradictory statements.
ii) Lack of attention to logic. Generalisation based on too few observations. Implications that do not follow from statements used to imply them. Arguing in circles. Allowing guesses to harden into facts. Passing over points of discussion by assertion (e.g. “it is obvious that ….”).
iii) Over attention to detail. When introducing examples, giving more detail than is necessary to convince the reader of your argument. Good referencing can help with this.
iv) Technical errors. Poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Use of undefined abbreviations. Sentences or paragraphs too long. Promising ideas left underdeveloped. Frequent use of pronouns (it, this, they…), when the noun or phrase being referred to is unclear. Padding with irrelevant information. Misuse of figures of speech and use of clichés. Limited vocabulary (avoid “things”, “obviously”, “good”, “nice”, “involved” and similar vague words and never use etc.) Overuse of quotations. Emotional statements. Confusion between plurals and possessives.
v) “Cut and paste” jobs. Explain and discuss using your own words. Do not be tempted to cut out paragraphs from existing reviews, paste them together, and then modify them. This runs the risk of being accused of plagiarism.
vi) Use of diagrams and figures. A diagram or figure can save pages of description if used correctly. Where appropriate, it is sensible to condense information into figures, with carefully constructed legends. You are strongly advised to draw your own figures rather than take them from other publications. If you must use figures that are modified versions of ones from other sources, then you MUST acknowledge these sources in the Legend (e.g. ‘adapted from Maffia et al, 2010’). One common fault is that the figures contain too much information and that the legends do not adequately summarise the contents of the figures. It is important that any figures you include complement the text of the Review.
The ‘punch-line’. Leave one important aspect of the essay until the last few paragraphs of the essay body. This will probably make the essay more interesting to read. Such an important point at the end of the discussion will help to link the conclusion to the body and give the conclusion more weight because the important point is still fresh in the readers’ mind. However, you must engage interest in the significance of the topic at the start of the essay.
Conclusion. Remind the readers of the main points. Reinforce their memory with the principal points of your argument. Show how the points mentioned have led to the conclusion. Be concise. Do not introduce new ideas or detailed explanations. Make sure there is a conclusion, even if the topic does not permit a definite and positive conclusion.
Bibliography. Reference to primary sources of observations and ideas are an essential part of a science essay. References should therefore be to original papers, reviews, or monographs. Popular (unreferenced) articles and textbooks are inappropriate unless used to illustrate a widely held belief or common misunderstanding. Avoid reference to websites as far as possible. Take care to list all references quoted in the text of the Review. Ensure that your references are in standard format (consult a journal such as the Journal of Immunology to ensure that you use an acceptable format. Note that different journals use different formats, you need to choose one and then use it throughout).
Final copy. The essay should be word-processed, and double-spaced between paragraphs with adequate margins. Correct all typographical errors (use spell-check programmes).
Always keep backup copies of the word processor file and update them frequently.
Redness, pain, and swelling? These symptoms are due to a process called inflammation, which ultimately serves to protect you. A proper physiological inflammatory response is what keeps us alive! Alarming news in the press and social media has recently attributed an unjust stigma to inflammation. Sadly, few people think that there would be no life or evolution on this planet without inflammation. Thanks to inflammation we can keep our immune system fit and respond promptly to the invasion of pathogens or the malfunctioning of vital organs.
In this module, we will discuss the 'unique selling points' (USPs) of an inflammatory reaction compared to other biological processes. We will also focus on the selective contribution of different types of mediators to the vascular and cellular events that feature inflammation.
At the end of the session you should have an understanding of:
· Why do we need inflammation and what is it for?
· The vascular aspects of an inflammatory response.
· The cellular and molecular aspects of an inflammatory response.
· Acute and chronic inflammation.
1. Rang & Dale’s Pharmacology 8th edition, Chapters 26 and 33
2. Medzhitov R. Origin and physiological roles of inflammation. nature. 2008;454:428-35. doi: 10.1038/nature07201. Review
Students will be introduced to Option D. They will also learn about the publishing process of scientific articles and methods and strategies for improving their writing skills in preparation for their in-course assessment consisting of a review article.
· To develop an understanding of how to efficiently access interesting, relevant, and appropriate information from the scientific literature.
· To develop an understanding of the publishing process.
· To begin to critically analyse and discuss published data.
Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are major causes of chronic poor health. For example, one-tenth of the UK population has asthma, and COPD is the fourth most common cause of death worldwide. Both conditions are characterised by breathlessness driven by chronic airway inflammation and this provides a challenge to immunologists both with regards to the development of relevant experimental models and the comprehension of the underlying pathology. We will discuss the current understanding of immunological mechanisms in asthma and COPD and how research in basic science translates to drug development.
· The contrasting patterns of chronic inflammation in asthma and COPD.
· Immunological endotypes of asthma and COPD.
· The impact of smoking on chronic airway inflammation and corticosteroid responsiveness.
· How immunological research informs drug development for asthma and COPD.
1. Vestbo J, et al. (2013) Global Strategy for the Diagnosis, Management and Prevention of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, GOLD Executive Summary. Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 187:347-65
2. Holgate S. (2012) Innate and adaptive immune responses in asthma. Nature Medicine 18:673-83
3. Brusselle GG, et al. (2011) New insights into the immunology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The Lancet 378:1015-26
4. Humbert M, et al. (2005) Benefits of omalizumab as add-on therapy in patients with severe persistent asthma who are inadequately controlled despite best available therapy: INNOVATE. Allergy 60:309-16
5. Haldar P, et al. (2009) Mepolizumab and Exacerbations of Refractory Eosinophilic Asthma. New England Journal of Medicine 360:973-984
6. Barnes PJ and Adcock IM. (2009) Glucocorticoid resistance in inflammatory diseases. The Lancet 373:1905-1917
Mental illness and chronic pain are major burdens on individuals and society. There are multiple underlying mechanisms, but there is now compelling evidence that dysregulated inflammatory pathways are likely to play a prominent role. In this context, communication between the immune and nervous systems is pivotal. This session will summarise how immune mechanisms interact with the brain, spinal cord, and nerves to generate these commanding symptoms and how pre-clinical and clinical experimental approaches can advance our knowledge and enable the identification of targets to support future therapeutic discovery.
At the end of the session you should have an understanding of:
· How peripheral immunological mechanisms contribute to neurobiological alterations.
· How inflammatory responses are initiated and maintained in the nervous system.
· Experimental designs that can test immune-nervous system cross-talk.
· Clinical imaging approaches to investigating neuroinflammation.
A reading list will be available before the session giving students the opportunity for background reading.
Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the arterial wall responsible for most ischemic cardiovascular diseases. The session aims to discuss the current understanding of inflammatory and immune mechanisms in vascular pathology.
We will define:
· The clinical impact of atherosclerosis.
· The immune cell involvement.
· The cytokine/chemokine involvement in atherosclerosis.
· The vascular immune response.
· The arterial tertiary lymphoid organs (ATLOs).
· The CANTOS, CIRT, COLCOT and LoDoCo2 trials
A reading list will be available before the session giving students the opportunity for background reading. Initial overview reading is provided in Galkina E, Ley K. Immune and inflammatory mechanisms of atherosclerosis. Annu Rev Immunol. 2009;27:165-97, Welsh et al. Br J Pharmacol. 2017;174:3898-3913 and Cardiovasc Res. 2021;117:411-422.
In this session, you will be expected to write an essay under examination-like conditions based on a vascular inflammation paper you will be given before the session. Essays will be assessed by the lecturer and feedback provided in Session 12.
We will define how to plan and write essays in preparation for the summer exams
There is now clear evidence that chronic inflammation is a key contributor to the development of cancer, and the varied components that drive and maintain inflammation are also intimately involved in the promotion of tumour growth and metastasis. In this session, we will review the basics of cancer development covered in last year’s lectures, then examine the role of inflammation in cancer development, and the mechanisms underpinning metastasis of solid tumours.
At the end of the session, we will have:
· Briefly reviewed immune control of tumour development from Level-3 lectures.
· Outlined the role of inflammation in cancer development.
· Identified the leukocytes and chemokines involved in promoting tumour growth.
· Covered current hypotheses in cancer including macrophage balance and latency.
· Understood the mechanisms behind metastatic migration of cancer.
1. Hanahan D, Weinberg RA. (2011) Hallmarks of cancer: the next generation. Cell 5: 646-74
2. Colotta F, Allavena P, Sica A, Garlanda C, Mantovani A. (2009) Cancer-related inflammation, the seventh hallmark of cancer: links to genetic instability. Carcinogenesis 30:1073-81
3. Zlotnik A, Burkhardt AM, Homey B (2011) Homeostatic chemokine receptors and organ-specific metastasis. Nat Rev Immunol 11:597-606
4. Muller et al (2001) Involvement of chemokine receptors in breast cancer metastasis. Nature 410: 51-56
This session will describe the cellular and molecular components of the skin's immune system. It will focus on both skin-resident and recruited immune cells, highlighting their functions, and how they interplay with each other for the maintenance of skin homeostasis. Perturbation of the homeostasis, following infections, injury, as well as autoimmunity will also be discussed using relevant examples of model diseases.
By the end of this session, you should be able to:
· Describe the basic structure of the skin and its cellular components.
· Describe the immune functions of the skin.
· Describe the contribution made by skin-resident immune cells to tissue homeostasis.
· Compare and contrast the key physio-pathological mechanisms underlying skin immune responses to injury, infection, and autoimmunity.
A reading list will be available before the session giving students the opportunity for background reading. During the session, relevant and recent publications will be presented by student(s) and discussed by the class as a whole in a problem-based learning format. Initial overview reading is provided in: Nestle et al., Nat Rev Immunology 2009; Di Meglio et al., Immunity 2011; Pasparakis et al., 2014; Richmond and Harris Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med 2014.
Bioinformatics is a notion for computationally driven analysis of biological data. This session aims to discuss the different applications of sequencing methods and how these can be used to answer biological and immunological questions. As part of the session, one demonstration of computational analysis will be performed. The demonstration aims to discuss the different tools and understand how the analysis is performed.
We will define:
· How to align sequencing reads.
· What can be done with genomic sequencing.
· Opportunities for transcriptomics analysis.
· Challenges and opportunities of single-cell transcriptomics.
· How to perform basic bioinformatics analysis in Linux and R.
A reading list will be available before the session giving students the opportunity for background reading. Initial overview reading is provided in: Whelan FJ, et al. A Guide to Bioinformatics for Immunologists. Front Immunol. 2013;4:416; and Hwang B, Lee JH & Bang D Single-cell RNA sequencing technologies and bioinformatics pipelines. Experimental & Molecular Medicine 2018;50:96.
The intestine is exposed continuously to enormous amounts of antigens and its immune system has to distinguish clearly between antigens that require protective immunity and those to which immunological tolerance must be induced. If this decision-making process goes wrong, inappropriate hypersensitivity reactions can lead to serious diseases. These diseases include coeliac disease and inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) such as Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis. These are increasingly important disorders in developed countries. This session will consider the clinical manifestations of these diseases, and the immune mechanisms that cause pathology, and will discuss current and potential future treatment strategies.
At the end of this session, you should have an understanding of:
· The natural history of these diseases, including the early and later-stage clinical signs.
· The diagnostic and treatment options available to identify and manage patients with these conditions.
· The genetic basis of IBD.
· The evidence that IBD is due to inappropriate immune responses to commensal bacteria, and how these are normally prevented.
· Animal models of IBD that allow definition of the pathogenic mechanisms of IBD.
· The interactions between genetics, environment, host factors, and foreign antigens in the development of IBD.
Chapter 12, “The Mucosal Immune System”, Janeway’s Textbook of Immunobiology.
This session will unravel the complex immunologic events that subserve the breach of tolerance and then effector biology in rheumatoid arthritis. It will cover the fundamental immunology of pre-arthritis and then compare and contrast effector mechanisms that lead to local chronicity and tissue damage. It will thereby provide an overview of how immune regulatory pathways can operate in the context of autoimmunity.
By the end of this session, you should be able to:
· Describe the basic phenotype of rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
· Describe the origin and development of the autoimmune response in RA.
· Compare and contrast the key effector pathways in adaptive and innate immune compartments to disease progression.
· Describe the contribution made by host tissue cells e.g. fibroblasts, osteoclasts, and chondrocytes to tissue pathology.
· Discuss therapeutic possibilities arising from the foregoing discussion.
A reading list will be available before the session giving students the opportunity for background reading. During the session, relevant and recent publications will be presented by student(s) and discussed by the class as a whole in a problem-based learning format. Initial overview reading is provided in: McInnes IB & Schett G New Eng J Med 2011; McInnes IB & Schett G Lancet 2017;389:2328-2337; Firestein GS & McInnes IB Immunity 2017;46:183-196.
This session will summarise the major classes of anti-inflammatory/immunomodulatory agents currently used in clinical practice.
At the end of this session, you should have an understanding of:
· Current anti-inflammatory/immune therapies.
· Biological therapies.
· Progress and challenges in translating the biology of the main diseases covered in Option D.
In the second part of the session, Prof Maffia will provide a brief overview of the topics covered in the Immunological Basis of Inflammatory Disease Option and will act as a facilitator for subsequent discussion. This part of the session is designed to be primarily ‘student-led’, and an opportunity for you to ask, and answer, questions on the topics covered in Option D. It should also allow you to identify any areas of weakness in your understanding that you may wish to strengthen by further study. Finally, Prof Maffia will provide feedback on the essay written in Session 6.