Just spent a few days at Warwick University Life Sciences Department completing an update course on Clinical Immunology. It is “mind blowing” to see how efficient our immune system is at protecting us by intensive surveillance and rapidly recognising any new virus’, super-bacteria and cunning cancer cell on a constant basis. Our 24/7 dedicated immune system’s let nothing pass without checking it out and killing suspicious cells wherever they may be. Modern cancers and viruses have become more and more clever at evading the immune system over time, but our vigilant immune system still remains just only one step behind. Whereby it rapidly recognises these mutating illnesses and catches up with their clever detection evasion strategies with devastating consequences.
Clinical Immunology is now on the brink of eradicating solid tumour cancers such as Malignant Melanomas and changing conventional cancer treatment from the old toxic “shot-gun” chemotherapy to cleaner specific cell-targeted immunotherapy. This involves the immune system becoming specifically enhanced with monoclonal antibodies to recognise and detect tumour cells and deadly organisms that rapidly mutate and change their physical appearance to elude detection.
The worry is that, when we cure cancer, where will we all live as we may all live to 150 years old!
I highly recommend this superb Warwick University course for any life scientist with an interest in Immunology.
Reference: www.warwick.ac.uk/lifescienceshortcourses
