On Thursday 17th April, a group of us made the journey ‘up the hill’ to the Richard Doll building to attend an immunology masterclass from Professor Abul Abbas. Prof. Abbas is an emeritus professor in Pathology at UCSF and author of numerous core textbooks including Basic Immunology: Functions and Disorders of the Immune System.
The whole-day course consisted of a series of lectures covering core topics in immunology, from innate immunity and antigen presentation through to B/T cell subsets, autoimmunity, and immunotherapy.
As my repertoire research has so far been focused on peripheral immune receptor transcriptomics, this course filled several gaps in my understanding. Highlights for me were the detailed overview of the key mechanisms/evolution of the innate system (and its interplay with the adaptive immune system), and the section contrasting mechanisms in the tissue-based vs peripheral immune response, in particular the importance of MHC cross-presentation of antigens inside tissues to enable T-killer cell activation distal from the lymph nodes. I also found especially valuable the chapter on mechanisms underpinning immune tolerance; for example Prof. Abbas highlighted a bespoke ability for cells of the thymus to express intracellular antigens usually restricted to other differentiated cells in the immune system, enabling a wider sweep of self-antigens during negative selection.
This course not only covers what is known about basic immunology, but also what isn’t known and why, making it valuable not just for researchers seeking an introduction to the subject but also those looking to assess (a) where consensus lies in the field, and (b) what might still be open research questions. I left with many new ideas and a renewed appreciation for the importance of the metadata in our Observed Antibody Space databases.
Prof. Abbas’ encouragement of audience participation and frequent humorous historical factoids and personal anecdotes made this course not only instructional but also a pleasure to attend. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to fill in the gaps in their immunology knowledge, and particularly to interdisciplinary researchers finding themselves drifting towards immunology-related fields.
