Lecture - Optimisation of adaptive antibody responses

19/05/2016 10:00 to 19/05/2016 14:30 (Europe/Luxembourg)

Esch/Alzette, Luxembourg

Speaker

Prof Michael MEYER-HERMANN Head of Department at the Helmholtz
Centre for Infection Research, Professor at the Technische Universität
Braunschweig, Directors board of the Braunschweig Integrated Centre
of Systems Biology, Braunschweig, Germany, Adjunct fellow at the
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies Frankfurt/Main, Germany

ABSTRACT

Upon infection innate immune responses are mounted which control but do not clear the infection. Adaptive immune responses by T cells and by antibody forming cells are mounted much slower but are pre-selected to optimally fight the infection. Specialised antibodies are essential not only for final clearance of infections but also for vaccination. At every vaccination, a so-called germinal centre (GC) reaction is initiated. In a GC, B lymphocytes divide and mutate their encoded antibody. The mutated B cell is subsequently subject to selection giving rise to an evolutionary process of generating optimised antibodies and memory within the organism on a time scale of 10 days. The functional principles of how B cells get diversified and selected will be presented. A particular emphasis is set on the mutual interaction of mathematical models and multi-photon imaging. These two powerful techniques together were able to unravel the limiting role of T cell help in the GC for B cell selection. It will be explained, why T cells control the number of divisions of B cells. More recently, the analysis of brainbow experiments allowed to monitor different clones in their evolution within the GC. This analysis revealed bursts of clones which may dominate a whole GC reaction as well as co-existence of many clones on long term. These findings have major implications for the design and development of new vaccines.

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SCHEDULE

10:00 - 11:30 : Workshop

House of BioHealth
Room Françoise Barré-Sinoussi

Registration required for the workshop - send us an email.

13:00 - 14:30 : Lecture

Lycée Technique d'Esch/Alzette - Salle de projection audiovisuelle

About the Lecture & Workshop series - Infection & Immunity

The LIH lecture and workshops series in Infection and Immunity, supported by the FNR, are gathering internationally recognised speakers to address topics around Infection and Immunity. Twelve lectures will be organised in 2016, followed by workshops especially dedicated to early-stage researchers.

Attendance to the lectures and workshops are free of charge. Should you be interested in registering for the workshops, please feel free to do so by sending us an email.

Where

32 rue Henri Koch
    Esch/Alzette 4354
    Luxembourg

When

From 19/05/2016 10:00
To 19/05/2016 14:30

Contact

Luxembourg Institute of Health
+352 26 970
+352 26 970 719
odoo@lih.lu